Claris,
already did it. it had been acting up lately, and I was running OS 9 at the time, and I tried to restart to OS X and it didn't show up in Startup Disk, and it wouldn't work when I booted holding down x.
so I firewired all my stuff over to my iMac in preparation to format and reinstall OS X.
I reinstalled, and restarted... X wouldn't start... after a few more reboots, the drive just quit.
and Panos, mine is also a fall 01 600 MHz. it's been well taken care of for the year that I've had it, but I'm the second owner. I also use it an awful lot. I've only got 384MB in it... when I replace the drive, I'll upgrade the RAM as well to cut down on drive grinding.
I'm still sad about it
oh well... I'll manage to get a replacement.
I might just save up $400 and let Powerbook ResQ handle it all, and let em throw a 512MB stick in it while they've got it open.