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Physically ejecting from a dvd drive on a PowerPC Mini
Posted by: Punkyclown on 2018-01-25 12:08:11
Hi all, I really do appreciate all the great feedback here, if there is a way to contribute to
the site please let me know.

Now I can not eject the disk I have in my dvd drive on my Mac Mini G4. Is there
anyway to get it out physically? Or is there anyway to get it to load from CD on startup,
doesn't seem to want to do that. I was running MophOS on it but reformatted part of
the drive as HFS+. Getting no where,
Thanks you all the help.
Brad Hansen

Posted by: Dog Cow on 2018-01-25 12:43:16
Have you tried powering on the Mac while holding down the mouse button?

I once had to physically remove a disc from my Mac mini's drive a few years back.... not pleasant!

Posted by: Gorgonops on 2018-01-25 13:54:11
Here's a page that includes instructions for ejecting the drive from the Open Firmware prompt if the mouse-button method doesn't work:

https://www.powermax.com/askjacob/i-cant-get-my-g4-imac-to-eject-a-cd/

If the drive is making a noise like it's trying to eject and is failing that's another issue. I had a problem with my early-generation MacBook Pro where the fabric lips around the eject slot stiffened with age and were putting enough friction on the disk during an eject that the drive would abort and suck it right back in again. That was annoying.

Posted by: Alex on 2018-01-25 19:09:23
If you can get a terminal bash prompt and the drive has not mechanically failed then try …

drutil eject

Posted by: johnklos on 2018-01-25 21:04:23
Boot to Open Firmware by holding down command-option-O-F while powering on. When you get to the Open Firmware prompt, try:

eject cd

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