{"id":1340,"date":"2020-12-13T14:38:07","date_gmt":"2020-12-13T14:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elephantandchicken.co.uk\/stuffandnonsense\/?p=1340"},"modified":"2020-12-13T14:52:22","modified_gmt":"2020-12-13T14:52:22","slug":"cleaning-the-lens-in-an-apple-cd-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elephantandchicken.co.uk\/stuffandnonsense\/?p=1340","title":{"rendered":"Cleaning the Lens in a ’90s Apple CD Drive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cleaning the Lens in a ’90s Apple CD Drive<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

90s CD-ROM drives frequently struggle to read CDRs (home written discs). Sometimes this can be helped by using another brand of disc or writing the disc at a lower speed, but in the end, the best solution is often cleaning the drive’s laser lens with a cotton bud and IPA. These instructions will be approximately helpful for other brand drives, but the majority of 90s Apple SCSI CD-ROM drives are Matsushita drives of a very similar construction (some early ones were Sony and different – I find the caddy Sony drives tend to be better at reading CDRs anyway).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The actual drive in the following pictures is an IDE drive, but the construction is identical, specifically this drive is basically the same as the one in my Macintosh PowerPC 9600, but I’ve used the same process to clean drives in an 8500 and an 8600.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Matsushita
Matsushita CD Drive
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Side
Side Bezel Latch
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Top
Top Bezel Latch 2
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Front
Front Bezel
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Homemade
Homemade Drive Eject Tool
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Ejecting
Ejecting the Tray
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Tray
Tray Ejected 2
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Release
Release Right Bezel Catch
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Release
Release Bottom Bezel Catch
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Release
Release Left Bezel Catch
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Bezel
Bezel Released
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Ready
Ready to Remove Screws
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Lower
Lower Cover Removed
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Latch
Latch 1 (Front Right)
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Release
Release Latch by Pulling Away from Metal Tab
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Latch
Latch 2 (Back Left)
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Disassembled
Disassembled Drive
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is a more modern version – the older ones have a bit more stuff inside them, but the process is identical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lens
Lens Assembly
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Don’t touch the lens!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Wipe
Wipe with IPA
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Dry
Dry Dry a Little
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Then reverse the instructions to reassemble. All the latches clip in easily when you put things back in space. If you’ve done it before the whole process is only a 10 minute job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good Luck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cleaning the Lens in a ’90s Apple CD Drive 90s CD-ROM drives frequently struggle to read CDRs (home written discs). Sometimes this can be helped by using another brand of disc or writing the disc at a lower speed, but in the end, the best solution is often cleaning the drive’s laser lens with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1368,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[13,283,12],"tags":[308,309,311,310,314,312,313,286,315],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/elephantandchicken.co.uk\/stuffandnonsense\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/IMG_20201213_132449-scaled.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g9vY-lC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elephantandchicken.co.uk\/stuffandnonsense\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elephantandchicken.co.uk\/stuffandnonsense\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elephantandchicken.co.uk\/stuffandnonsense\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elephantandchicken.co.uk\/stuffandnonsense\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elephantandchicken.co.uk\/stuffandnonsense\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1340"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/elephantandchicken.co.uk\/stuffandnonsense\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1373,"href":"https:\/\/elephantandchicken.co.uk\/stuffandnonsense\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340\/revisions\/1373"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elephantandchicken.co.uk\/stuffandnonsense\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elephantandchicken.co.uk\/stuffandnonsense\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elephantandchicken.co.uk\/stuffandnonsense\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elephantandchicken.co.uk\/stuffandnonsense\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}