Thanks for the replies - Mingles, no it is long out of the warranty period (2008). From the comments from Tan43 and Lowrider57 it seems that my best is to forget the idea of repairs and just get the disc drive.
The drives in iMacs, Macbooks and most laptops from other manufacturers are designed for small size, not durability. It can be replaced but as Tan43 suggests, a better, cheaper alternative is to get an external drive, especially with an iMac where portability isn't an issue.
The apple store is willing to put a new drive in my Mac mini (2009) for $80. I've decided we don't use the cd drive enough to warrant getting it replaced.
S7horton - that seems pretty reasonable to me but it scares me to think of what might happen to my music files (iTunes artwork, etc.) if the repair guy screws something up.
I am perfectly capable of screwing things up on my own without outside help! LOL!
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