No good rassa-fraggin CD-ROM is acting up

[flakbait]

The dang thing is barely a year old and has already started to go. I stick a disk in the tray, whack the close button, and it does strange things. Here's a list of what it's done so far:

Seek light stays on solid
Spools up to full speed without reading the disk
Randomly changes speed while trying to read the disk


The first one happens the most often, while the other two always have the seek light flashing away. Rarely does it ever actually read the dang disk. I've used compressed air to blow inside the drive with the tray open. Even used a little lung power with no effect. So what I need is a list of possible fixes or a list of good (preferably cheap) CD-ROM drives that will work in an antique computer. Lost my job last month so money is dang tight around here.


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Flakbait [Delta6]
Delta Six's Flight School
Put the P-61B in Aces High
"For yay did the sky darken, and split open and spew forth fire, and
through the smoke rode the Four Wurgers of the Apocalypse.
And on their canopies was tattooed the number of the Beast, and the
number was 190." Jedi, Verse Five, Capter Two, The Book of Dweeb
 

[1776]

Spit on CD and put it in the drive.  If that doesn't work, lightly strike the drive with a hammer.  If neither one of these fix the Drive...well ya really don't need a CD drive to fly AH

[bloom25]

CD Drive?  OH, you mean that cupholder thingie!  

It might we worth trying one of those cd rom drive cleaning disks.  (They have little brushes on them.)  It would probably be even better to just go out and buy a $30 drive.  (CD drives are pretty cheap these days.)

[Staga]

Toshiba's readers were quite good, check if you can find one. It doesn't matter if its 24X or 40X, There's really not too much difference.

[ 06-08-2001: Message edited by: Staga ]

[flakbait]

Staga I've gone through 4 Toshiba CD-ROM drives since I bought this thing 4 years ago! LOL I don't think I want another one of their junk creations. I settled on a MagicSpin 52x that CompUSA has for $50. According to Dell's Godly Tech Geeks it'll work in this system. Whether or not it'll last more than a month is beyond me, but I'm gonna give it a shot.


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Flakbait [Delta6]
Delta Six's Flight School
Put the P-61B in Aces High
"With all due respect Chaplian, I don't think God wants to hear from me right now.
I'm gonna go out there and remove one of His creations from this universe.
And when I get back I'm gonna drink a bottle of Scotch like it was Chiggy von
Richthofen's blood and celebrate his death."
Col. McQueen, Space: Above and Beyond
 

[bloom25]

Any Cd-Rom drive that uses the Atapi (basically E-IDE) interface will work in any PC.

As for Toshiba Cd-Roms, maybe you are really hard on Cd-rom drives???  I've been using the same 32x Toshiba without a problem for 4 years.

[Staga]

My 24x lasted about 4 years too.

[flakbait]

It could be that I'm hard on CD-ROM drives, I don't know. I never beat up on it, never slap it around, yet they keep dying on me. There isn't much dust in the computer room, and NO smoking (heavy smoker here) so I don't know what could be the problem. Maybe I just got lucky and was picked to get 4 lemons in a row! I'm gonna try the MagicSpin, or if I can afford it a Sony CD-RW and see what happens. Worst case it doesn't work. Best case it works. With those kind of odds I can't lose!

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Flakbait [Delta6]
Delta Six's Flight School
Put the P-61B in Aces High
"For yay did the sky darken, and split open and spew forth fire, and
through the smoke rode the Four Wurgers of the Apocalypse.
And on their canopies was tattooed the number of the Beast, and the
number was 190." Jedi, Verse Five, Capter Two, The Book of Dweeb