PowerBook Superdrive Cleaning
I’ve had trouble buring CD’s and DVD’s for sometime, basically I couldn’t get through a burn without a error. I came to the conculsion that it was a problem with dirt and not a software problem. I have read on the Apple discussion board of people having the exact same problem with the the full size superdrive but no one with the problem on a powerbook. I tried using the disc cleaners you can buy in the store. It solved my girlfriends Flower Power iMac disc burning problem but it had no effect on mine. I read that many people had to take their (full size) superdrives apart to clean them. This is apparently what I needed to do to my Powerbooks drive. I haven’t seen anyone else that has done this so I though I would document it.
My (15″ 1 Ghz) powerbook, the first model with a superdrive, has been with me for about 2 years now and I plan to have it last me till the G5’s come out. So I figured if I killed it I could buy a replacement from OWC.
If you try this you do so at your own risk. Don’t blame me if you kill your machine. You have been warned.
There are two brackets attached to each side of the superdrive which prevents it from coming apart, you have to take those off. To do so you need to remove several wires and 2 circuit boards. It looks pretty messy but turns out not to be so hard. You will need a T8 & T6 along with a phillips head screw driver. I also suggest having a pair of tweezers for manipulating some of the smaller parts.
Take the bottom cover of the Powerbook off. There are six T8 screws.
Once you have it’s underbelly exposed you will want to remove the black bracket between the hard drive and the DVD drive (2 screws). Then remove all the flex cables (3). I found the main drive flex a little difficult to remove, use caution. Don’t wreck your main board trying to get it off. There are also two regular wire connectors. One is obvious but the other one is somewhat hidden under the black cover of the circuit board (tweezers come in handy here).
Once you have all the wiring out you can wiggle the drive out. There will be a rubber boot over a post on the right back of the drive. Carefully maneuver the drive out of this area. Then you will need to take the right bracket off. Keep track of the rubber boot.
Now you need to take the two circuit boards off the left hand bracket. There are two T6 screws on each board.
The front circuit board will come right off but the back one will have a flex circuit that will need to be carefully maneuvered through the bracket.
Once those two circuit boards are freed you can remove the bracket. There are two phillips screws holding the bracket on. Remove them. Note that one of them is a flush mount, the circuit board that goes in this space won’t fit unless you put the right screw back here.
At this point you should have all the pieces off the drive and you can start surgery on the drive itself.
Remove 4 phillips screws from the drive. I had no stickers or anything keeping the top from coming off once it was freed. You will need to carefully make sure the front bezel come off the top cover. There’s no reason you should break those tabs tabs taking it off. The top cover kind of hinges off the one side, don’t force anything trying to take it off.
Now the guts are exposed. I used a can of air to blow out the inside (there was visible dirt inside mine). I also used a optical grade lint free cloth to clean the lens itself.
That’s it. Follow the steps in reverse to put it back together (you did keep track of your screws, didn’t you?)
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Yeah, I had a number of posts a while back about how a cleaning helps to burn DVDs. One thing to note is that most cleaners are set up to clean CD heads and you may have to play though all parts of the cleaning CD to make sure that the cleaning wipes actually hit the DVD head.
I got the cleaning CD to play on the iMac but the Powerbook just spit it back out. Wouldn’t play it.
Actually I had this same problem. I found that if you move the computer…. more or less at all, even back and forth a bit, and ESPECIALLY if you tilt it, there’s a very, very good chance the CD/DVD will fail. Just let the thing along and don’t bother it while it’s burning.
Thanks for posting this info. I had to take apart my Mom’s 1ghz TiBook to clean the Superdrive. Following your guide did the trick. Dusted out the drive and clean the laser head and now it reads discs again. The surgery was relatively easy once I was able to see where are the screws were.
Thanks.
Gordon