Bizarre CD-Rom trouble

[mark at buttery.org (Mark J. Dulcey)]

Josh Pollak wrote:

> Ok, this is really puzzling me, and I'm wondering if anyone else has 
> seen this. It happens on both Linux and Windows, so its probably a 
> hardware issue, but I'm hoping someone can give me some tips anyway.
> 
> I've got a Shuttle K41G XPC, one of those small 8x8 cube PC's. The 
> screwy thing is, no matter what CD rom drive I put in there, it refuses 
> to eject. Generally, it will eject the first time I put the drive in the 
> PC, but then it stops working. They will still read the CD's that are in 
> the drives, but I can't swap them. When I use eject -t (or right click 
> on the drive and select eject on windows), or if I just hit the eject 
> button I get the same result:
> 
> The tray motor stutters a bit, the access light flashes for a minute, 
> and then 'autoplay' re-engages, as if the drive thinks it just loaded a 
> new CD, when in reality it just re-accessed the old one. Adding to the 
> oddity, whenever the drive does this access dance, my UPS beeps like its 
> being drained of power, or as if it has been disconnected from the wall 
> (which it hasn't).
> 
> I've swapped drives repeatedly, and each time with the same result, it 
> will eject and work fine once or twice, and then it starts freaking out. 
> What could be causing this? I thought maybe the secondary IDE controller 
> was screwed up, but it recognizes and reads from the drives just fine, 
> so I'm really puzzled.

One possibility is that the power supply in the box is marginal, and 
can't supply enough extra juice to operate the drive tray. 
Unfortunately, it's probably some sort of silly non-standard thing, so 
you can't just go over to MicroCenter and get a bigger one.