Opening CD on Mac G4 without keyboard

[Vaughan]

Folks

I was working on a late model G4 server last night. It was in a server room connected to one of those monitor/keyboard switch boxes, with a PC keyboard connected to it.

The G4 has no CD tray open button, there is a eject disk key on the keyboard. But it was a PC keyboard plugged in...

Does anybody know if there is a keyboard shortcut (or something) to open the drive tray? We ended up having to shut the server down and temporarily pluging in a mac keyboard. But there's gotta be a bterre way.

[stanley]

Vaughan:

On a Mac laptop, the keyboard shortcut to open the CD tray is F12, and I think it's the same on the old small Mac keyboard. On some Mac keyboards (the larger ones) I think it is F15. However, with a PC keyboard, I don't know if the function keys work the same at all - they don't seem to have the same ASCII values, I think.

However, you can always force the CD tray open with the old paper-clip into the pinhole trick, which really just activates the "eject" button built into every CD drive. Some Mac towers seem to have no pinhole, but most do (and they all should, according to Apple's specs), and the Mac OS accepts the action & will mount the disc when the drive door is pushed shut after that...

At least that way you don't have to shut down the server.

-Stanley

p.s.: Just in case you (or any other readers) don't know what I mean about the "pinhole" - the CD/DVD door on the front of a Mac usually has a very small pinhole, usually on the lower right of the door. If you take a paper-clip and straighten it out, then push it into the hole, you will make contact with a button which will open the drive door. Don't push too hard; the button only has about 1/8 inch of play, and you don't want to break anything, but you can feel when you're moving the button, and it's not electronic, but mechanical...

[dbruggmann]

On some Macs the "paper-clip into the pinhole trick" won't open the cd tray completely, only some milimeters. Then you can open it manually. But beware: If there is a cd in the tray and you get it out this way, the symbol of the cd will stay on the desktop, which can cause further trouble.

[stanley]

Detlev:

Quite right; I'd forgotten to warn about using that trick when a CD is in the drive.

-Stanley

[Vaughan]

"...the old paper-clip into the pinhole trick..."

I looked (getting the door that covers the tray open was a story in itself) but couldn't find the in little hole.