Hallelujah! My iBook is fixed.
I checked with Apple to see how much it would cost to have it repaired and I was told it would be around $400. Yikes!
I called and visited a few places in Sierra Vista to see if they could help. Their responses didn’t exactly fill me with confidence:
"Well, you can leave it with us and we’ll mess around with it."
Um… no, thanks.
Finally, I stumbled upon Charles Marlowe, local Mac troubleshooter. He was able to trace the problem back to a tiny piece of white plastic that had broken off.
He had my iBook in his custody for a couple of days and as I anxiously paced the floor, he fashioned a replica piece of plastic out of an old boot diskette for OS 7. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Today he handed back the iBook and my CD tray stays put. Yay!
Total cost: $80.
It feels good to have my iBook back. I’m complete again.
I’d better start taking better care of it, though.