I'll look into it, thank you. I did go ahead and buy one with the busted up drive (it was 17$, what do I have to lose), so I'll get to look at it soon enough. I'll tell you how that goes!
I see this problem a lot, and when buying this makes them significantly cheaper, sometimes as low as 10$ online.
But does anyone know if this is (generally) a problem with the motherboard or just the disc drive itself? I understand that it could feasibly be either, but since it's such a common...