New iMac G4 found! But CD tray won't eject

[meall]

Hi guys,

I just put my hands on a very good shape iMac G4 700 Mhz. The machine is working well so far. There was no keyboard or mouse, but that's not an issue for me.

It had 384 Meg of RAM, I upgraded the internal RAM with a 512M stick which give it now a whooping 640M of RAM. I will look into my pile of RAM to see if I have a 512Meg stick of SODIMM to upgrade the user replaceable RAM module and give it 1 G of RAM.

I also need to replace the PRAM battery. If I can just find where I put my lot of them, that should be an easy fix. 

But it looks like I always have something not working with any retro computing I touch those days. The CD tray won't eject. If I try to eject the tray with iTunes, I hear a little clicketi that looks like the command is received my the CD mechanism, but it does not eject. When I push the black button under the tray, it ejects and can be injected just as expected with iTunes. 

When I open the case to upgrade the RAM, I saw that it was really dusty. I had to remove all that crap from there with air. Maybe the CD is just having some dust in it? Maybe it is a need for lubrication? I've done a lot so far to try figuring it out, but nothing worked so far. 

Any help appreciated!

Thanks

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

It's possible the belt is dried up/dirty, yes.

 

[meall]

It's possible the belt is dried up/dirty, yes.

Is it possible to replace the belt without replacing the whole drive?

I sure may replace it with a cheap SuperDrive instead of the Combo drive, but that's not really necessary...

Edit:

I removed the whole drive unit assembly already, but the CD drive is all enclosed and not really accessible for repairs.

 

[Byrd]

The CD drive slides out of the metal frame - I'd try another generic IDE DVD drive, it's not worth pulling apart and repairing if faulty.  I'd also look into putting a nice fast 7200RPM IDE hard disk in there at the same time, to give your iMac a big boost in performance - the stock drives were very sluggish.

 

[meall]

The CD drive slides out of the metal frame - I'd try another generic IDE DVD drive, it's not worth pulling apart and repairing if faulty.  I'd also look into putting a nice fast 7200RPM IDE hard disk in there at the same time, to give your iMac a big boost in performance - the stock drives were very sluggish.

Will any DVD drive fit in there? I mean, the front of DVD drives for PCs generally have a front plate that may be larger than the one the iMac can take due to the flappy door of the case. Am I wrong on this?

How much should a generic DVD drive will cost? 

I paid 35$ for the iMac itself, so it better not cost too much!

 

[meall]

I forgot to mention:

For the HDD, I was thinking on replacing it with a 32 Gb CF card using an IDE/CF card adaptor. In theory it should work I guess.

 

[Macdrone]

It needs to be a short drive not a fill length.  Finding a apple bootable should be pretty easy.  IDE drive new in box even on eBay should be pretty cheap.

 

[meall]

Cheapest I found is this:

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00D2CO8WO?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_1&smid=A1HU0UETW2PFPN

Found a few cheaper, but need to vent careful as they are SATA, not IDE.

 

[meall]

I finally place the order for the replacement CD/DVD drive. 

When I removed the drive cage, I realized that those iMacs were using standard 3.5" HDD. I do not know why, but I always was under the impression that the G4 iMac was using portable 2.5" HDD". So I followed your recommendation of replacing the internal 40 Gb by a 160 Gb drive at 7200 RPM that I removed from a G4 tower. Once I receive the CD drive I will install it a do a clean install of 10.4. 

I also removed a 512 Mb RAM board to upgrade the RAM in it from the G4 tower. It now have 640 Mb of memory. I just don't have any SODIMM of 512 Mb to install for the user replaceable module. If anyone have one, I'd gladly take it. 

The one thing I'm looking for is a replacement battery for the PRAM. I remember buying a pack of 10 from a guy in this forum, but for some reason I can't figure out where I stored them... That sucks! The one in the iMac is showing a 3.2V instead of the expected 3.6V, and its loosing time and date each time it is shutdown. 

Other than that, the machine works just fine. 

 

[meall]

I'm on this computer again, I installed a 160 Gb HDD in place of the standard one that came with it.

For some reason I cannot format it to more than 31 Gb. Is there a size limit on that machine? I searched the web and could not find anything that refers to a max size HDD supported in this iMac. In any case, I think the one that came with it was a 40 Gb, so it should be able to detect at least that amount available. From MacTracker, the first iMac was sold with a 40 or 60 Gb, so I find it abnormal to not being able to get at least that capacity...

 

[CC_333]

That's definitely strange.

Although, there is a 128 GB limit imposed by the IDE hardware of Macs from that era (not sure this particular iMac is affected, though), so bear that in mind.

The odd thing is, it seems to be allowing access to the *remainder* (149.012 GiB - 119.209 GiB = ~29.803 GiB or approximately 32 GB), which shouldn't be happening.

Actually, you know what, some IDE drives have a jumper that imposes a 32 GB cap for compatibility with older machines, and it sounds like that jumper might be active. Check your jumper settings (it varies from brand to brand, so it might be wise to get your drive's model number and look up its *exact* settings) and see if that solves your problem.

Otherwise, maybe there's something wrong with the iMac? Have you reset the PRAM? Checked the cables?

c

 

[meall]

Ah, a Jumper for a limit of 32 Gb may be a good point to start. I'll look at it tomorrow. I also tried it in a G4 tower with an IDE card, and got the same. Disk Utility cannot see more than 32 Gb. 

 

[meall]

CC_333, you put your finger on it. I put a jumper in a position tat, initially, thought was for the MASTER select. I read the diagram on the reverse order, and basically set it up to the MAX 32 GB size. 

It is now fully working.

Oh, by the way, I mistakenly bought a SATA cd/dvd drive, and used a SATA to IDE converter and it worked fine, after many trial and error.

Thank you guys.

 

[CC_333]

Yay! I'm glad I was able to help out!!



c