Combo drive won't recognize tiger installation disk

[wilks22]

I have an iMac G4 700 flat-panel, and I just bought tiger. I'm currently running jaguar 10.2.8. When I try to install tiger, the computer states that a blank dvd has been inserted, and wants to know what to do with it. Holding down 'C' with the disc inserted during reboot doesn't work. The computer ejects the disc. The iMac has a combo drive. (dvd-rom) Also, the drive will not play a normal dvd movie (comes up with an error). I have 1 gb of ram on board. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
**NEW**
I've been investigating, and it seems that there are a lot of users experiencing problems with their combo/superdrives. Some state that it occurred after installing updates, others think it's a dirt issue. I'm going to take the thing apart when I get home and see what's up inside. I think this is a problem on Apple's end, and I wish it would be addressed. Concerning one of the answers to my post, when a manufactured dvd (Disney) is inserted in my drive, after a long time, a box appears with 'fatal error' in it, and there is a white exclamation point in a red field. That's from my recollection, I'll try it again later. Thanks for the replies.

 

[cal6n]

First thing I'd do is install "Applejack" and run it. Only just found it myself, but I'm really impressed, especially as it's free.

Read up on it and download it here:

http://applejack.sourceforge.net/

Note: Once you've got Tiger running, applejack will no longer run correctly. There is an update due, apparently.

 

[Bear]

I have an iMac G4 700 flat-panel, and I just bought tiger. I'm currently running jaguar 10.2.8. When I try to install tiger, the computer states that a blank dvd has been inserted, and wants to know what to do with it. Holding down 'C' with the disc inserted during reboot doesn't work. The computer ejects the disc. The iMac has a combo drive. (dvd-rom) Also, the drive will not play a normal dvd movie (comes up with an error). I have 1 gb of ram on board. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Since Combo drives are supposed to eject blank DVDs, it sounds like your drive has major issues.

You mentioned an error message when you try and play a DVD - well what is it? Knowing that, someone might be able to come up with a quicker answer, although in truth it sounds like your drive is quite possibly dying.

As a curiousity, have you tried repairing permissions? Also, if that doesn't work, try downloading and re-applying the 10.2.8 combo update to your system. If neither of these work, unless someone else has a brilliant idea, you probably need the hardware serviced.

 

[obeygiant]

this might not make a difference, but are you running 10.3.9?
Its possible you cant upgrade from anything else.
This is just a guess however.

 

[Bear]

this might not make a difference, but are you running 10.3.9?
Its possible you cant upgrade from anything else.
This is just a guess however.

And a bad guess at that, people have been updating from 10.2.x and 10.3.x. This sounds like hardware issues since the iMac won't even recognize the disk to boot from it.

So, I guess in reference to my above post, the permissions and reapplying the 10.2.8 combo update will most likely do absolutely nothing about the drive issue.