Mac 911: Intel iMac

My 2-year-old baby sister grabbed a CD or DVD off my desk and smashed it into the optical drive of my iMac. We pushed it the rest of the way in, thinking we could then eject it. That didn’t work, and the disk became stuck. It would not eject the disk. We tried all sorts of ways to get it out, but ended up making an appointment at the Apple Store. That’s where I am now. I’ll let you know what happens.

UPDATE: The people at the Apple Store couldn’t eject it either. They are going to replace the optical drive. It is under warranty for another three weeks. My iPod Touch and my Powerbook Wallstreet are my computers now.

Mac 911: MacBook Pro

My dad has a MacBook Pro and the screen suddenly went black. He tried hooking up a projector and the projector was blank. He got an appointment at the Apple Store and that’s where I am now. The Apple guy was amazed by the problem and tried everything we did. He zapped the PRAM and hooked up a monitor, with nothing happening. Luckily, the computer was able to do a Time Machine backup last night, so if the drive fails he’s safe. They are going to have to send the computer in and have it fixed. I will say what happens later.

UPDATE: We got the machine back and it seems to be working fine. I will let you know if something interesting happens. Stay tuned for the Christmas special.

Mac 911: iBook G3

My school has two identical iBook G3 700mhz laptops. The PTA uses QuickBooks Pro for their accounting, and they wanted to know if this iBook could run it. I took the iBook home to see if it could and install an old version we had lying around. I booted the thing into 9.2.2. because I was better with 9 than with 10, and the computer crashed. I tried everything. I hooked it up to my iMac as a FireWire drive, tried to boot it off the system on a 10 CD, and then, as a last try, tried my 9 disk. Mac OS 9 was able to fix the hard drive and get the machine to boot off it. We are now going to erase the hard drive and reinstall Mac OS X. By the way, we backed up the computer before erasing it. It erased quickly and then installed Mac OS. It booted up fine, ran software update, and now we are putting it through some tests. I will post again if anything interesting happens. Have a Mac repair story? Post a comment!