On Thu, 22 May 2003 23:13:26 GMT, G.M.Voeth babbled on about Does Anyone Know ?
proclaiming:

Hello,

I have two CD Drives on my Presario
on the face of the CD drives are
little holes one on the face of each drive
the hole is large enough for a 1/16 drill
bit to fit into with a little slop to spare
I am not going to experiment by sticking
things into these holes and pushing.
I suspect the holes are used for gear alignment
or something like that during manufacture
maybe some one here knows for sure.

It's supposedly to trigger an emergency release latch in case you can't get the door open.
Although my Compaq (Mata****ty) CD-ROM didn't have one, the LG CD-RW that I replaced it
with does, and the instruction manual (in PDF format off the internet) described the whole
thing in detail (and the hole thing in detail, for that matter.)
There's another slightly larger hole on my drive for headphones. Don't confuse the two.