Back when I bought a second hard drive for my Mac Pro, I accidentally pulled out the optical drive box. I was pushing on the drive to seat it by pulling on the box, which I didn't realize pulled out. When I tried to push it back in, the IDE cable got caught in the post that seats the box, and ripped it. I booted it up and tried using the drive, and it seemed to work OK.
But lately, it hasn't been. I don't know which of those wires does what, but the drive was being weird about recognizing discs, and it made a coaster the other day. I figured maybe it was time to try and replace the cable.
For as much as Apple gets right, having every cable being exactly the right length can be a pain in the ass when you need to change something. What's worse, it took a whole series of steps to get to the motherboard to plug in the new cable.
First I had to remove the memory cage. Two screws at the bottom were caked with loc-tite, and I couldn't one of them off. I ended up destroying the screw, and had to get it off with Vise-Grips. I finally got them off, which allowed me to wiggle off the heatsink cover, and free the fan assembly. Or so I thought. (See pictures)
The f'ing fan piece was nearly impossible to get out. A hard plastic slot secured it and it absolutely wouldn't move, and there was nothing to pry against. So while struggling and getting frustrated, of course the cat is crying and the dryer is buzzing. It was one of those classic world is pissing you off moments.
I took a deep breath, and tried to think if I had any tool that would allow me to grab it and pull up that was smaller than my fingers (at this point cut three times). I used the car door panel prying tool I've had, by just getting it under the lip of it on the side where the heatsinks were, and it lifted right out.
The longest cable I could find happened to be one that Cousin Dave had, so I went out to his house to pick it up. It's still about four inches too short to fit the way it should, but I made it work, and all is well again.
That was way more work than I thought it would be.
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