My Superdrive broke

After a couple of years of light use, the Superdrive in my iMac G5 broke. Just started spitting disks out. To be honest, it was never the fastest or most reliable of drives but convenient nonetheless.

So I spoke to the local Apple centre who told me they (nor official Apple stores) sold replacement parts!

My options were:

• my Mac to Apple and get it repaired for about £300
• buy an external drive for about £50.

The Apple Store in Birmingham confirmed the cost of repair but their experts thought I should get a part on ebuyer (they don’t sell it) and fit it myself.

So after a couple of hours research I eventally found the xlr8yourmac drive compatibility database and found the Pioneer DVR-K05 is a model that will work in iMac G5′s. Apple also list Optical Drives as user-installable parts, if your Mac, like mine, doesn’t have a built-in iSight.

So I’m awaiting the delivery of my Pioneer drive from PCCentre Hong Kong (eBay, £43) with my fingers crossed that it works and going to follow this guide http://www.flickr.com/photos/mickl/sets/7205759407…