Superdrive jammed up empty, not accepting discs - solution

I just experienced an weird lockup of the MacMini SuperDrive: It was empty, but would not accept a disc in more than half way in i.e. it had ejected the previous DVD successfully, but the eject mechanism had not returned back to its 'accept new disc' position.

After trying all possible tricks to eject a jammed disc i.e. boot with the mouse button depressed, use iTunes to eject disc, try resetting the PRAM and SMC, etc. I stumbled on this bit of advice worth its weight in gold:

Just gently force a DVD into the drive by tapping it gently strengthening the tapping force until it cycles the eject mechanism mechanically.

It took a dozen taps with increasing strength but eventually my drive found itself and cycled the mechanism and accepted the new disc. It spit it out 2 sec later, but after a second normal insertion the drive has worked flawlessly.