External drives no longer show up - light is on but nobody home!

Hey all,
Still using an old iMac G4 and it works great... 10.2.8
(and ibook 10.3.9)
plugging in some Maxtor External drives and they don't show up (mount)
I hear them. The light is on.
Checking in disk utility shows that computer senses them and says I can repair permissions (have not tried that yet) but they never appear
on the desktop. These drives are more than 5 years old and haven't been used in about a year - my mistake. use it or lose it apparently.
If anyone can throw a life raft I'll grab it.
thanks,
Al

Dale,
They don't show up in Disk Util.
Nothing to click on.
When I plug them in I get a message saying do I want to initialize or ignore?
I am assuming initialize would erase everything but there is stuff on them so I don't want to erase.
thanks,
Al

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