OK, I finally solved my problem. There was definitely some sort of rotor that was elevated near the middle right of the drive preventing me from inserting a disk. The drive was obviously in a whacked state thinking there was a disk physically in the drive even though there obviously was no disk in the drive.
SO! The following did NOT work: system reset, sticking in a disk and banging it, forcing it, pushing it, tapping it, etc., rebooting and holding down the mouse key - EVERYTHING I read online.
This DID work: Get a credit card and slide it into the drive below the rotor near the front edge of the drive slot (away from the screen) - it will go past the blocking rotor near the back. At that point if you move it back toward the screen you can feel the rotor still blocking. Now gently bend the credit card upward (toward the keys) while sliding it back (toward the screen) - it will pass over the top of the rotor. Now hold the credit card where it is and get a CD and slide it into the drive with the credit card shimming it over the rotor. The disk should go in as far as you want it to. I kept out just a tiny edge - enough to hold onto with my fingertips. Once it was in that far and inserted past the rotor, that was enough to reset whatever sensor on the drive was messed up and the motor came to life, the blocking rotor dropped and everything resumed functioning. I did all this while the machine was running with no stupid restarts etc.
Doesn't eject for me. – Timothy Swan – 2017-11-07T06:25:39.810
1Great, that worked after two or three attempts. – DaG – 2011-09-20T17:05:14.523