A BDU's is born every minute ...

[Scott Stevens]

On Tue, 18 Oct 2005 21:32:27 +0100 (BST)
Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com> wrote:

> On Oct 18 2005,  8:29, John Foust wrote:
> > At 01:39 PM 10/17/2005, Bob Bradlee wrote:
> 
> > >With the aid of a paperclip and a prybar, I opened up the drive to
> fine a
> > >shattered CD inside.
> 
> > But I've seen this happen *twice* to a client who wasn't
> > dunking them in LOX.  CDs are spinning quite quickly.
> 
> I've never actually seen it happen, but a couple of years ago one of
> the manufacturers who supplies the University issued a warning about
> fast drives, and IIRC some were recalled.  The explanation was that the
> faster "52x" drives run at a speed which is very close to that at which
> centrifugal force can make a polycarbonate disk break up, so a defect
> in the disk can have a profound effect.
> 
Back when I experienced my first 'high speed' CDROM drive, which was on my new work computer, I heard the humming as the CD spun up and thought 'hmmm.'

Then I started adding progressively more scotch tape to a spot on a CD to throw it off balance and investigate the noise level produced.

Then I got brave (and stupid) and scotch taped a little metal washer on the disk.

The CD drive buzzed so loudly that I had to quickly yank the power cord on my computer to keep people from wondering what the HELL I was doing in my cubicle and investigate.  I had to paperclip open the drive (the paper clip is called the Mac-in-tool in my personal folklore, because it's a tool no Mac user could live without, even for the floppy drive) to get out the CD.  It wasn't a 52x drive, just the first drive I encountered greater than 4x.