To add insult to injury, the damage to the ribbon caused a short which took out the Combo drive!
I always make triple-sure now to put the short hex screw in the middle. :'(

Click to expand...

I actually put screws too long along the cd slot on the iBook G4 I got when I swapped hard drives...

"Hmm why are cd's getting scratched really badly and REALLY hard to get in?"

So since I misplaced the correct screws for that spot, I just unscrewed them a little so that it all works the right way.