[rminkler]

My powerbook g4 1ghz was working fine until this morning. Last night, I flashed the Optical Drive with a region free firmware, after which I was able to play region 4 dvds as intended. Everything was dandy untill this morning when I picked the laptop up by one of the front corners, and it completely powered off as I picked it up. Pushing the power button did nothing at first, but after a few tries it booted and was fine. Then, I picked it up a again and the same thing happened - a complete shutdown. Again the power button was unresponsive for a bit, but after a few minutes I was able to re-boot the machine, and I held the mouse button down while booting to eject the dvd that was in the drive (imagining that the DVD in the drive might be related to the problem.)

Then, stupidly, I put the DVD back in the drive to check that it was ok, and then ejected it again, and as the disc was ejecting I shifted the machine and it powered down - this time with the DVD half-way ejected, almost, but not quite enough so that I can see the disc through the slot.

Now the machine will not boot at all. After leaving it plugged in for several hours I returned to find the case hot to the touch.

I imagine that because this problem appeared when I had a disc in the optical drive, that the disc has something to do with the random shutdowns. The machine has been fine for months, and I have not watched a dvd on it for a long time.

I´m going to try to disasemble the powerbook to manually remove the dvd from the drive.

Has anyone heard of anything like this? Thoughts?

[rminkler]

Update: It works again now. I started taking it apart and then thought better of it (didn't have all the right tools), and then after removing and replacing the battery about ten times it just started up and spit out the DVD. Phew!