Yesterday I took one of my Mac mini’s (Lion, for those curious) to work again so I could do a bit of a deep clean on it. Something was rattling around in it and I didn’t want to turn it back on (it’s been out of use since the Spring) without getting whatever it was out of there.
Well, when I popped it open and did the cleaning I found nothing special, but I figured whatever had made the sound was blown out with the compressor and everything was fine. That wasn’t the case.
I always test these things before I put them back together. I’m quite tired of having to go back in them to fix things, but I will say this — I’ve become quite skilled at working with the early Intel Mac mini systems! Still, they are annoying to take home only to not have the tool handy to get them open when you need to do something else, so I check out everything before I toss the lid back on and take them home.
Just my luck I find a problem – the damned optical drive doesn’t read. Not that I use it ever on the two machines, but dammit I like for things to work and such could always be useful down the line.
I had to figure out what was up. Did it just die? It totally could have happened, but I don’t quite see a real reason for it to have. Maybe it’s just dirty? All I knew for sure is that I had to get inside the damn thing, fully taking it apart more than I ever had before — I had to get to and open the optical drive just to see if I could fix it.
There was hope — the drive would take the disc, but not spin it up and, a few seconds later, eject it. It’s like it would try, but just couldn’t get anywhere. I was going to, at the very least, make sure the inside was clear before I just said fuck it and bought a new one.
Well, I go through the process of taking everything apart in the core of the Mac mini. Hard drive is out, optical drive is out, and I open it up. What’s greeting me other than a screw somehow lodged between the actual laser and its mounting assembly!
Yep.. the laser couldn’t focus so any disc inserted couldn’t even be checked to be an optical disc, thus the drive never spun up the disc — it just rejected it outright!
Following the removal of that screw the drive worked fine and I was able to reassemble the unit. There is one final bit of comedy to all this, and that’s where that screw came from.
See, it had actually come from the optical drive mounting assembly. That’s right, the screw was actually from the Mac mini itself!
This really perplexes me, as I have to question how the screw actually got there! Not only should it not have been loose, as I had never removed the optical drive on this unit before, but it also had no actual way to make it inside the optical drive from its location inside the Mac mini!
I seriously have no idea how it happened, but well, it did, but it seems to have done no damage so I’m chalking this one up on the “success” board.
It makes me wonder if the sound I heard inside the machine was actually that screw all along… which still begs quite a few questions, but better to let sleeping dogs lie and just treat this as the somewhat funny tech moment it is.
Now, if only my other Mac mini was working fine I’d be in business for some projects right now. Oh yes, the other one decided to crap out on me as well. More to come on that soon. Damn used PlayStation hard drives…
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