PowerBook G4/500 DVD-Rom replacement

[Heinz]

Hi,

the DVD-Rom drive of my PowerBook G4 Titanium (PowerBook 3.2) is having problems to load/unload media. It's a mechanical problem, when mounted correctly reading the media works well. The issue started with some noise while rotating the disk. The upper side of the DVD was decorated with scratches. Recently the DVDs were not even loaded at all.

From the sources I've found on the Web I could not find out which drives would be a suitable replacement. Getting a spare Matsushita SR-8187 - which is the original drive - seems to be quite difficult. So here are my questions:

a) Are there any other optical drives which are known to be a working replacement in the early Titanium models?
b) Is it possible the replace the optical drive by a second hard disk - like in modern MacBooks? Do suitable disk trays exist for this?

Kind regards,
Heinz

[devils_advisor]

where are you located i might have one for you.

[Heinz]

I live close to Munich in Germany :-)

[devils_advisor]

lord almighty let me find out how much shipping will be

[DieHard]

Attached is the Apple Dealer Factory Hardware repair manual

[Heinz]

Attached is the Apple Dealer Factory Hardware repair manual

Thanks, great document to have. It does not tell more about my DVD issue than I already know, but I'm sure it will be helpful in future repair/replace sessions.

Greetings,
Heinz

[Heinz]

lord almighty let me find out how much shipping will be

Lord what ;-) ... I'm curious if this works out.

Thanks & greetings,
Heinz

[Heinz]

Finally I bought a second PowerBook G4 for a low price at eBay replaced the DVD drive in my "good" PowerBook. So this issue is solved.

To be honest I started to buy some more "spare PowerBooks" on eBay because it's much cheaper to get additional RAM and spare power supplies this way than buying new parts. So I'll end up with some spare or replacement parts. An may be I even get hold of a top 1GHz model

Greetings,
Heinz