Chris,
To force the CD tray to open, you can hold down the physical mouse
button while the startup chime is ringing and continue holding it down
until the tray opens. This will open it whether there is a CD
resident in the tray or not.
This along with other tips is available on my web-site at:
http://web.me.com/kilburns/voiceover/tips.html
or
http://homepage.mac.com/kilburns/voiceover/tips.html
Later...
On 10-Sep-08, at 4:32 AM, Chris Gilland wrote:
OK guys, this has not! thank? God! happened to me yet, and God
forbid! the day it does, however, I cannot help but to ask. I do
still have my Tiger system, and you'd better believe I plan on
keeping it, but, I just yesterday finally! got me a Mac running
Leopard! God do I love it! It is a Power Mac G4 just like the
Tiger machine, accept this one is 800 mhz. It's gotta 40 gig hard
drive. one gigga s d ram, a monitor, a mouse, not sure what type,
and a 24 X CD burner/dvd combo drive. It's a pretty sweet system.
Anyway, there is however one really big problem. Um? Like, bloody
hell? The guy from Craigs list who gave me this thing has no clue
about this and suggested I write yall for help. Basicly, now you
tell me if this is not lovely. Not? The CD drive on the tower has
no hardware based button on the front a the tower. It's not slot
loading, it actually is a tray, just like normal, but no open/close
button. So, then, I got this keyboard. OK, well, this keyboard is
kind of interesting. It's newer than the keyboard I got with the
Tiger box. Basicly, it looks almost identical to a windows keyboard
with very few differences. For one, above your arrow keys, instead
of a 6pack, you got a 9 pack. Basicly in that 9pack, on the top is
F13 through F15. Then below that is help, home, and page up.
Finally, the last row is delete, end, and page down.
Then you got your number pad, and above 7 8 and 9 is clear, equals,
divided by, I think? then multiply. Now, getting back to the CD
thing... I ran off on this tangence for a reason. So, stick with
me. Above this, you got four buttons. You got vol down, vol up,
mute, then eject.
Well, the keyboard is not plugged into a hub. It is going directly
via USB into the tower. Well, the eject key is doing absolutely
nothing. btw, to the right a the space bar is command, then another
option key, then a right control key. The guy said this was a much
newer keyboard. The end of the USB plug feels real smoothe like the
IPod USB plugs feel. The keyboard is kind of a shiny tannish/off
white color. There are no feet on the bottom of it to slant it up.
Not that they're broken off, they're just not there. They never
were. Now, I can find in my desktop, the CD volume, and hit command
e on it, and that works. Then to get the thing back in, I just take
my hand and very lightly push the tray, and it goes back in. Well,
this is all good, and I also have if I vo m twice, then vo right a
few times, I do have an icon that says eject. Now if I vo down on
that, I do see one menu option which says eject combo drive. If I
vo space on that, it definitely does eject. Also in ITunes, if I do
command e, it opens. Where the underlying problem, however is, is,
ok, I turn my system on one day, well, o? sh**. It won't boot up.
Great. Lovely. So CD stuck in the drive or not. That eject key
ain't workin. So, I gotta get a Leopard disc in that bloody thang.
how 'em I gonna do that though, if I can't boot to the OS to get to
that volume and command e on it? How can I do that if I can't get
to ITunes to eject it. How do I do this if I can't get the menu bar
icon to be accessible? And, finally, how do I do this, if the damn
eject key won't work. See? I'm kind a screwed at that point.
Unless yall know something I don't. Do yall know a way maybe we
before bootup maybe like during bootup could trick the drive into
openning? While booting, command e won't work. I already tried.
Apparently, Command E only works in ITunes, or on a selected mounted
volume. I guess in theory, I could always leave my damn Leopard
disc in the drive, just in case, but, that's kind a pathetic.
There's gotta be a better way. I am totally perplexed why the eject
key won't work. I even mounted an external volume, made sure cursor
tracking was on, highlighted it in the desktop, then hit the eject
key instead of command e, but that didn't even unount the thing. I
turned off voiceover, and it did no good. I'm just wonderring if
maybe even though this keyboard has that key, maybe it isn't
supported with this tower. BTW, this keyboard doesn't have an on/
off power button. you gotta do it on the tower itself. I dono if
this is a newer IMac keyboard, or what. Again, God forbid the day
this senario happens, but it would be nice to be able to rest
assured that if this does wind up happenning, I have no reason to
pannick. If it crashed, I don't wanna have to take that darn thing
into a store, and say, hey I crashed and there's a CD in here, can
you pop it out for me? It's like, o, gr'r'r'rate, not again,
Cr'r'ris.
So, yeah, if anyone's got any idea, let me know please. I'll check
and see maybe if there are any software updates that'll fix it, but
somehow I doubt it, being last night, I updated everything to the
most current, or so I thought I did. Although even if I didn't!
you'd still! think I could get the booger opened before it fully
booted.
Anyway, this is really kind a pannicking me, not that it's gonna
crash any time soon, I hope, but, knowing if it does, I don't have a
way to really deal with it, um, yeah.
Chris.
Tim Kilburn
& Carter the Canine
Fort McMurray, AB Canada
