iMac G3 ingests and immediately ejects CD's. Is the drive toast?

[Huxley]

Hi all,

I was hoping to install Mac OS X 10.1 onto an extra partition on my slot-loading iMac G3 (Blueberry, 350MHz, non-Firewire model). Unfortunately, every optical disc I insert is immediately ejected, without being "spun up" at all. This iMac and CD drive haven't been used in many years so I suppose this isn't a big shock, but it's still a bummer - especially since it has no Firewire ports and cannot boot from USB.

Any suggestions on getting the drive working again, or is it a goner?

Huxley

PS I would never stoop so low as to use "toast" in the subject line of a thread about a CD drive as a pun. That would be terrible, certainly not something I would giggle about as I clicked "Post thread"

 

[Durosity]

Might be worth running a cd cleaner through it in case it’s just a dirty lens? It’s probably not that.. but I don’t see the harm in trying.. especially as opening those machines up is likely to result in a big pile of crumbling plastics

 

[Huxley]

Might be worth running a cd cleaner through it in case it’s just a dirty lens? It’s probably not that.. but I don’t see the harm in trying.. especially as opening those machines up is likely to result in a big pile of crumbling plastics

I had the same thought right after I started this thread! I popped my nice cleaning CD in there annnnnd it got trapped inside

Once the cleaning disc was in there, the drive started frequently making sad whining / whirring sounds - it was obviously trying to eject the disc but not getting very far. It took ~20 minutes of playing with a credit card and tweezers to finally manage to extract the cleaning CD. Not trying that again!

 

[Byrd]

It’s the belt and may also need some old grease removed/cleaned internally and freshened up. Had the same on a 24X iMac G3 slot load, with some work it’s accepting CDs and reading them now

This is the best guide I could find, boiling the belt seems the best option.

https://imgur.com/a/g4

 

[finkmac]

boiling?? Just replace it…

 

[Byrd]

Yeah - boiling to slightly shrink and make it supple as finding the right size/thickness can be difficult (cross section of the belt is it is square shaped too not round). There are several packs online that sell kits of various belts for cassette decks which might suit.