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 ...