This is just to let you know that I took my MacBook to the store in Montreal with my three loose screws totaling in size a bit more than the diameter of a pregnant flea. First, to make a long afternoon on the phone short, the vendor is going to replace the logic board (over $ 1,000.00) *because* Apple Canada agreed that six months later, it was still covered by the warranty. I had problems with the vendor, not with Apple. The vendor argued that the MacBook had been opened and that it voided the warranty. Apple said that if there were no evidence of physical damage to the board, it was still covered. Of course, I only had taken the MacBook apart to remove the Superdrive and to eject a stuck CD with brute force, not the network kind. I consider myself lucky, I did not have to buy the same computer twice.

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One of my daughter’s CD game allegedly MacOSX compatible got stuck into the so-called SuperDrive of one of my MacBooks. It has found its kryptonite and nemesis.

Apparently, sometimes disk copy protection on certain audio disk will generate an error that will cause the CD to stick in the drive. I’m not sure this is a rational explanantion. No matter what, the CD was stuck.

I tried the usual tricks. The first thing to do is to reboot while maintaining the left mouse button pressed. That didn’t work. You can also maintain the trackpad button clicked and reboot. Didn’t work.

Next I tried obscure key combinations. Pressing the option key (alt) while rebooting normally looks for all possible system disks. Apparently this routine must start with the CD/DVD drive because nothing but a black screen appeared. Next I tried looking through the drive’s door and tilting the MacBook. No avail.

Why did Apple remove the paper clip hole that would eject anything from previous drives? Design? Change of supplier? Blind faith in Chinese production quality check?

A Google search lead to nothing except many finds for similar problems. Is this a general issue with bad drives?

I tried rebooting the p-ram (legacy habit) thinking I was lucky to have ten fingers and ten toes for the key combination. No result.

Alright, it was time to get busy and bring on the torque artillery. It must be easy to get at the drive, surely designers had anticipated an eventual drive replacement. Is every one at Apple’s so optimistic as to bury a SuperDrive under ten feet of micro technology for Lilliputians (why don’t we ever cite the Blefuscudians)? You need surgeon’s hands to get at it.

When you open your 13″ MacBook (at your own risk as you will read) there is a very good source of play by play commentaries here at IFIXIT.

I thought I could do it myself. I was wrong. I did succeed in removing the CD after having dislodged the “SuperDrive” successfully, even if it did put up a Super good fight. But, I am sure that Steve Jobs who is known for spending days looking at screw details had no intention of me ever servicing my MacBook, had complete faith in his SuperDrive supplier or was so busy designing the iPhone that he missed on the replacement procedure for a SuperDrive.

It is a painstaking procedure better left to professionals who like me must have also missed the lower left hand side, glued, useless bracket supported by 2 Philips screws on their first MacBook opening. Everything went fine except for the keyboard lid being stuck and not popping open because of that bracket. I had to use force and that never goes too well with micro scale anything.

Next, I will take the MacBook to an expert along with three screws, a dent in my pride and afterthoughts for copy protection and the SuperDrive…