What kind of CD-Rom did you put in there ? Factory pressed CD or a CD you've burned yourself ?

Could also be file system. Not so likely with CD, since they mostly use ISO9660, but it is possible to write CDs with UDF, and that will not work in DOS. Try playing an audio CD. If that works, the drive itself should be OK, and you're down to software issues.

kikendo wrote:

Is this a lens issue? I never really diagnosed/fixed a CD-ROM unit so any pointers appreciated.

It is so easy.
Open it, undust it, clean the lens, reassemble it and be amazed!

maybe it is suffering from ejectile dysfunction

Deksor wrote:

What kind of CD-Rom did you put in there ? Factory pressed CD or a CD you've burned yourself ?

Good question: a burned CD and an audio CD.

SirNickity wrote:

Try playing an audio CD. If that works, the drive itself should be OK, and you're down to software issues.

I already tried. Didn' t work.

retardware wrote:

Open it, undust it, clean the lens, reassemble it and be amazed!

😠 of course I already did this. It didn't fix anything.

Replace it by a working one. It's just a cd drive after all.

Test the drive in another system. If it still doesn't work properly, the laser may be failing. If you really care, you can look up a replacement laser diode assembly, and spend an ungodly amount of time performing surgery on it. After having done this with a Goldstar 3DO, I can't say I would be quick to do it for anything else that isn't extremely important in some way.

kikendo wrote:

The reason I am not trying to replace it with any other generic unit I have around is that this unit has a special tray that matches the case and I would need to find the exact same one as a replacement and, so far, I have not.

If you're lucky, the drive is generic and the end of the tray/face can be carefully removed and reattached to another drive from the same manufacturer.

derSammler wrote:

Replace it by a working one. It's just a cd drive after all.

Seems to me like you do't like reading messages in their entirety. It's not just a CD drive, read the message again.

BushLin wrote:

If you're lucky, the drive is generic and the end of the tray/face can be carefully removed and reattached to another drive from the same manufacturer.

Yeah I wanted to do some sort of hybrid like this but am unsure if the tray is standard.

Easy way to find out.
Eject the tray and then get another drive and eject the tray as well. It will be super easy to tell if you can swap the face plate pieces.

I bet it is a standard drive with a special faceplate.

What is the brand/model of the drive? It should have a sticker on the top of the drive.

you can just swap bezels. if you cant find a drive that will accpet your bezel you can probably file it down and glue it on or somthing if you are careful in making sure that it will be flush and the tray will close properly.

Seems to me like you do't like reading messages in their entirety. It's not just a CD drive, read the message again.

Show a picture, please. I know the Gateway 2000 PCs and they have standard 5.25" bays. No idea what "special tray that matches the case" is supposed to mean here. They used an off-the-shelf CD drive and many drives back then shared the same look anyway.

Apart from that, I just said: "replace it with a working one". Where do you read that you should not try to find and use a working one of the same model? The thing is, if cleaning and maybe recapping does not help, there's nothing else you can do. If there's something wrong with the PCB, you can't repair it due to all custom parts. You would need a donor drive, which you can then just use instead. If the laser pickup is bad, you can try to find a replacement, which will be expensive and hard to find. And replacing a laser pickup is something you won't be able to do, since it's rather complicated and requires alignment afterwards (no offense, but if you had that abilities, this thread would not exist).

One thing to check (and a simple one too) is that both the IDE cable and the power connector (molex) are correctly and securely attached. I recall at least one incident in my past where a poorly attached power connector was causing the drive to look available, but report errors while trying to read anything (like within half a second without even trying to read).

I'd like to know what is so special about it too. If the current one is non functioning it just makes sence to just replace the silly thing with one that works.

Caluser2000 wrote:

I'd like to know what is so special about it too. If the current one is non functioning it just makes sence to just replace the silly thing with one that works.

The bezel/faceplate on a normal drive will not match up with the case.

Kikendo - why not post a pic of your drive. Maybe somebody here has a matching one.

I have more than a filing cabinet drawer full of optical drives... some of them with non-standard bezels.

Quick update in case anyone was still curious: After buying a drive with the exact same mech as the gateway drive and being ready for an extraction of the tray, I realized the tray was really difficult to get out, so I gave it a SUPER THOROUGH clean, and my original drive revived!

So word of advice to anyone, dismantle your drive as much as you can, and give it a super thorough clean with compressed air and contact cleaner, plus clean the head well with isopropyl alcohol. I might just save it.
I guess my initial clean was not thorough enough 🙁