Well last time I was on here I was concerned about my iMac G4 being unresponcive and dead
Thankfully I got a refund on it and bought another iMac... I saved up some extra and got a brand new sealed core duo iMac (not core2duo). The only downfall is I *just* discovered it's ONE month out of its 1 year warranty so I'm stuck with a new sealed iMac and no warranty....

Something always has to be wrong with my luck right? Yep

One of the first things I did was stick a DVD in it, it ate it and then the DVD didn't even recognize anymore. I asked on the Apple.com forums and of course they said call the apple store - I did this.

They said it needed replacing and quoted in total $825 for the repair of the burner. Yeah... that's about almost the price of the whole computer.

Everything else works fine so far. I'm just annoyed that my luck with iMac's downright stinks.

The guy at the apple store said I can't buy the dvd or repair it myself, I assume he was lying... or was he right??

If anyone knows a cheaper way to fix the problem... Id love to hear it... I'm getting really desperate for solutions now

Thanks for reading this far ^^;

You can buy your own dvd burner and replace it. Although I'm not sure how easy / hard this is.

If you don't feel confident, get an external USB2/Firewire optical drive.

You COULD go for a firewire or usb external dvd burner. As for the purchase of the imac, was it from a store? I'd investigate that further.


oh and Hawker... JINX!

Can I make an external drive the main drive ... say for example if my mac software failed, could i used the secondary external DVD as the primary one to boot the OS CD in?

Does it have to be any special type of external drive?

Well a guy in Sydney got it for a birthday present but didn't want it so he sold it on ebay to me and it's never even been opened or touched >_< I'm pretty cut that it says I bought it in Jan 06 though when it's evidently brand new. Oh well...

I'm pretty sure it can be your primary drive, and that you can boot off of it (ie using it as boot drive with your install DVD) - Although I've never personally done it. Perhaps a more technical member can butt in here and confirm or deny

And I don't think it has to be any particular case / drive. Everyone I've ever used as worked perfectly. You may want to chat to your local apple center, as they probably have a few that will be good and obviously they can confirm it will work with mac!

Cool It'd still be nice to get it working inside the mac...
I have a feeling it's not the DVD drive failing and that it's just fallen unplugged or somthing in the post.
It took my disc fine... and revs when the computer starts up.. just OSX doesnt see the drive. It *sounds* like it's working fine... damn

If you're worried, you can take it down to your local repair agent, and just get them to do an inspection, normally costs around $60-$100, but they can tell you what needs replacing and if you can expect future problems.

They'll probably also provide a quote to fix, which I'm sure will be cheaper than anything Apple ever give you.

The Intel iMacs are much more difficult to get into than the G5 was, so whether or not you can replace/repair your DVD drive is going to be a matter of how comfortable you are cracking the case.

Just to eliminate the obvious - you have ejected the DVD and tried a different disc, correct?

Also:

That's not Apple giving you that quote - it's the specific reseller you spoke with. If you check around you might find someplace that will do it cheaper.

Interesting dilemma - I recently took apart a G4 iMac for the first time (out of warranty, and I finally collected the guts to do so) to replace a dead hard drive and optical drive. Worked a treat, and in retrospect seems very easy.

As a bandaid solution, go the external burner. They're so cheap these days - $40 for the drive, $20-30 for the firewire case. Definitely get the firewire case if possible, as I'm not sure whether a USB drive would boot. I'm not 100 per cent sure if a firewire external DVD drive could be used as a boot drive, but a firewire hard drive certainly can be, so if you have one of those it's not so much of a risk. I'd guess you could probably boot off an external DVD drive through Startup Disk if you've got OS X running.

If you really want to fix the problem, you have your wits about you, and you're able to follow instructions, try these two sites which detail how to take apart a core dup iMac:

http://home.comcast.net/~woojo/DFFA5...sassembly.html

http://www.maclife.com/article/creat..._duo_processor

Sure it's not as good as those wonderful original iMac G5s, but if you follow the instructions/pictures carefully, document your progress (and the screws and parts especially) and make sure you have all the tools and are very familiar with the process before you start, it's not all that difficult. Definitely worth it to save the iMac, and saves you $825. At your own risk of course, but it is an option.

Really?? Well that's something then... I don't know about whether we'd have anything like that in Geelong but I'll try and google it...
Either way I'll have to saving up my pretty pennys This sucks that Apple can get away for charging almost a grand to replace the DVD I am still in shock about that. Gah.

I'l see how a third party place goes then and see how far we get with that...
It's a pity I cant just fix it myself though

I can't eject the disc unfortunately, and it's a friends dvd (go figure).
The first thing I did with the mac once I got the OS running was stick the dvd in to test it (yes stupid to use a friends dvd I know lol) and it just ate it and never responded... It did rev like it was loading though... but it didn't show up in the system profiler...

There are some forum members/supporters/advertisers here on MacTalk in Melbourne (just a short trip up the freeway) who could probably give you a competitive quote on replacing the Optical drive. Macmate springs to mind, but Decryption would know all the others in your neck of the woods.

External drives are fine, the only difference is you might need to use a command other that Command C to boot off external drive. I'd go Firewire as it will be faster to load as a boot disk.

Go Apple.. About this Mac....System Profile and it should tell you what DVD drive you have, if its not telling you there is one there, then its not connecting properly.

good luck

Reboot and hold down the left mouse button - this will eject the disc.

Thanks so much for those links Ozi
I'm more so worried by the fact that II'll be opening the monitor too which cna be dangerous and that.
I saw a video on how the G5 opens up, it looks awesome. Call me pessimistic but it sounds like the only changed that feature ont he core duo so they can put people in the situation of having no real option but to take it to an apple store, yknow?

I looked at those photos and I gotta say I'm frightened about the risk of destroying whats left of the iMac I might just go with the external drive untill I have the money to hand over to Apple... but damn... I dont know if I can live with myself paying $800 for a Dvd burner... damn. Theyre only like $40 to replace on my pc... >_<