About two weeks ago, the CD drive in my 12" Powerbook G4 stopped working. My laptop is 3 years and 3 months old, putting it 3 months out of warranty. No big deal; I can get by without a working CD drive.
On Friday, my laptop stopped booting (more specifically, it would boot, but only after at least 15 minutes had passed). After running some disk repair utilities, reinstalling the OS twice (once as an Archive and Install, once as an Erase and Install), my laptop was still not booting properly.
After talking with my department's tech staff, they suggested disconnecting the CD drive from the motherboard. I spent a half hour over lunch today taking my laptop apart (with help), disconnecting the CD drive, and putting the laptop back together again. The laptop seems happy again and is booting normally.
Our best guess is that the following conversation was happening during bootup:
- Computer (to CD drive): Are you a CD drive?
- CD Drive: BGAK!
- Computer: That's not yes or no. Are you a CD drive?
- CD Drive: OOK!
- Computer: That's not yes or no. Are you a CD drive?
- CD Drive: FLUFFY!
- ...
Since the CD drive had stopped working, it wasn't going to answer yes or no, so the way to break the loop was to disconnect it so the computer can't talk to it anymore.
content