By Jove, he was right

[bluecuracao]

Computers are just freaking weird freak things.

A couple of days ago, MB called me at work, distraught because his G4 Powerbook wouldn't start up.

Mind you this wasn't a big surprise to me, because the thing is trashed--if Mad Max were to have a laptop after the apocalypse, it would look like this. Keys missing, corners so dented the worthless battery barely fits in, and cover scratched up all to hell. So naturally I assumed it was a hardware issue, and started investigating replacement options.

But in the meantime, we had to figure out how to recover all the files--we both had some important shit on the thing, and I've been way too busy/tired/lazy to do any backups in a long time. So I suggested to MB that he call Springboard (local Mac store), describe the problem to them, and see if they thought they could help us out.

Well, they suggested that we try to run whatever repair disks we had first, because if we brought it in, they would charge $95 just to try the same thing.

So MB managed to dig up his ancient AppleCare and Norton Utilities disks, but not the original system setup disks...okay, I'm just realizing right now that I had upgraded our Macs to Tiger, and I have those disks...

But that's neither here nor there, because his disk drive wouldn't allow a disk to be inserted at all. SHIT.

A funny thing though--during our initial conversation about all this, MB had said for some reason, "I think something just needs to be poked..." I'm not entirely sure what led him to think this, but after my 20+ years experience with Macs, I couldn't discount it. The especially weird thing about his idea was that he had it. I'd never realized before that he would care to have a sense for such a thing. And wouldn't you know...

So earlier tonight, I gathered up the disks I thought I would need, plugged in the Powerbook, and started it up. As before, the gray apple screen came up and the little dial underneath it spun around, and eventually froze.

I shut down and tried to insert the Norton Utilities disk. It stopped just short of going all the way in. I hit the startup button, and tried again--no luck. As it was starting up, I kept trying to push it in semi-gently, over and over, again with no success. It stalled yet again at the same point, and as I tried to push the disk in again...the system broke free, and the startup completed!

MB is sound asleep right now, but I can't wait to tell him in the morning that he was right. Something actually did just need to be poked...in the disk drive. Fuck if I know why that is.