This is what we did tonight for computer science.  Yeah.. I ripped my (wife’s) MacBook Pro apart with five little spectators. Yes, all five. Sam only got into the screws once. Anyway we all learned about the internals of a MacBook Pro.

This was actually the second time I busted it open. The first time I also took the DVD drive itself apart and attempted to clean it (#fail).

The drive is a slightly different model, which is just as well because I really believe that Apple broke mine with a firmware update.  The operation was a success and my DVD drive works for the first time in probably a year or more.

Before the swap.

After the swap.

Also notable is this dialog which came up the first time I ran DVD Player after swapping out the drive.

The drive was off eBay for about $45 delivered and the seller promised to swap it out if it did not work (he did not have a MacBook to test).  The drive new is $150 and I was quoted $200 for the repair with labor.