cd drive issues

First off, I would like to say hello to the forums. I recently got an older eMac and I love it. I do have an issue with my machine though. I purchased from a guy through craigslist, *and got a great deal* who had installed the airport extreme card on the eMac. The issue I am having is that the cd drive does not always open. It takes a few pushes of the eject key to get it to come out. It reads it, because the eject icon displays, but the tray doesn't slide out. It also is slow when ripping cds. It runs around 12 to 13x for the first 2 or 3 songs then slows to 2 to 4x for the rest of the cd. Since you have to remove the cd drive to install the airport card I was wondering if he could have messed something up or if this is a different problem. I wanted to see if anyone knew of a problem like this and if so if there is anything I can do to fix it. I am thinking of eventually upgrading to the superdrive as I only have the combo drive at the moment.

If needed the eMac is the last model they produced, the 1.4ghz model with 10.4.

Thanks all.

leezard5 said:

The issue I am having is that the cd drive does not always open. It takes a few pushes of the eject key to get it to come out. ... I wanted to see if anyone knew of a problem like this and if so if there is anything I can do to fix it.

Click to expand...

From a fellow eMac user, sometims the little tray door on the front of the eMac casing sticks and needs a little assistance from a finger nail. The cog mechanism of the drive tray may have dirt in it also.

Secondly, don't spend too much time or money on that internal drive. It reads like it's worn out, and it may have had a lot of use with a previous owner. I've read several posts about internal optical drives, and most responses say "go external", with either firewire or USB or a combo. Optical drives are cheap nowadays.

If you're wondering about brand, I'd warmly recommend Pioneer, which works really well with Mac. OWC http://www.macsales.com/ has plenty of info about what suits your computer.

Thanks hugh. That was my other option.