[RageX]

I haven't been engaged in this hobby much but I recently went back to dig through some old systems, see if there was anything I could sell.  I was working to install IRIX on a few old systems and it looks like all my external drives are dead.  I took one apart, it appears to have split a pinion gear, easy enough to fix.  The gears they're using are pretty wimpy and just pressed on a smooth shaft.  Not sure why this gear cracked in half, maybe a bad limit switch so it didn't detect went he tray is closed?  I have 2 other units that after they power on they open their tray and don't seem to ever register that the tray is shut, so they're always re-opening the tray.  Again, a limit switch issue?  Maybe the mechanism skipped a gear tooth so it isn't triggering the limit switch?  Or the switches just die?  The systems are all well stored, and undisturbed.

It sucks to go back to something and find out that it's like rotted... Don't get me started on the plastic, some of plastic skins have become like pasta.

Is anyone else seeing this with their drives?  Are optical drives just not that durable over 20-30 years?  Any tips for fixing this?  Any tips for the skins?  I def. need to try some retro-brite on some of these parts but I've heard it doesn't work well for colored plastic.