My Optical Drive Made Its Last Breath

[Canned Brain]

Dear Mac Friends,

I hereby mourn the demise of my optical drive.

As a matter of luck, I successfully installed a USB card on my Power Macintosh 9600/200 a couple years ago. Why luck? Because it's the only way to send stuff from it to a modern-age computer. The floppy drive was ill from the very childhood, and now even the optical drive broke down. The problem is, it won't open by pressing the button. Checking the internals of the machine won't be of much help since I have now idea how it all should look like before the drive's decay, let alone who it should look like in alive and functioning mode.

Surprise, surprise: Gouging a needle into the little emergency opener doesn't work either! I tried it with needles of different length; sometimes I proceed deeper, sometimes not. But there's always a drag that stops the needle from drilling towards. I would break the needle or hurt me if I approached with violence.

Zesty savory: there's still a disk inside, and I suppose it to be an OS 9 installer ... 

[IIO]

in a 9600 you should have a free PCI slot at ease.

when you dont find a scsi 1 drive you might want to consider getting a PCI ATA card and connect an internal drive this way.

ATA DVD burners are like 1-5 USD on ebay. not sure about ATA cards for you oldworld machine.

(the SATA path might leave you without booting capability for the drive.)

[ovalking]

A large straightened paperclip is my preferred eject tool. You must angle it straight or you will be pressing on the wrong bit.
I don't have your case style here, but the clip goes in about an inch on my 9500.
It can also be useful sometimes to hook something behind the tray cover and give it a helping hand.

The last time I had an optical drive failure it was a broken belt drive. They are probably reaching the end of their life now. I managed to swap a belt from a slower model.
Either way, take it apart - you've nothing to lose.