How do I force-eject a CD when I cannot even get to the start-up screen?

Question

Friends, Let me first apologize for getting myself into this mess, in the first place.
I bought a second-hand iBook G4 in the U.S., for a friend of mine, and brought it to South America, where I am living for one year, but far from any Mac Repair Center. I am getting the computer ready, to give to my friend, as a gift.
The computer was working perfectly here for the few weeks that I have had it. It has OS 10.3.9 installed, but no OS9. I wanted to install OS9, so that I could give my friend some older software to use with it.
(In fact, I inserted the software CDROM that I was going to give to my friend, into the second computer, to install the program before giving him the disk also. This was an important mistake.)
Moreover, the OS9 disk that came with this second "new" computer does not appear to be the same one that shipped with the computer originally. Consequently, when I tried to install OS9 Classic, it would not install correctly from this disk (although it was indeed made for installing OS9 to another iBookG4, but not this one, apparently.)
Consequently, as a short-cut, I simply copied my own Classic "system folder" from my own (completely) identical iBookG4, transferred it to a pen drive, and was going to move it to the second computer. Not all of the files copied successfully, however (some printer descriptions, for example), but most of them did.
So, I transferred what I could, in the meantime, and now I had a new Classic "system folder" on the second computer.
When starting up the Mac Classic environment there, however, the Classic environment would crash, and in that case I would just close the Classic environment altogether and continue normally in OSX mode, trying to solve the problem. I realized that my "copy" was not good enough.
Then I got the idea to make an "archive" of the original classic folder on my own computer, and then transfer the archive, to see if it would make a more perfect copy this way. It archived perfectly indeed, and at half the size, so I assumed that I would now have all the necessary documents, once it was transferred and decompressed onto the second computer.
Meanwhile, I decided to erase the incomplete corrupt copy of the (classic) system folder on the second computer, to avoid confusion when the new copy was transferred. As I moved it to the trash, the computer told me that it was being used by the system, and that it therefore could not be deleted. Since the classic environment was not running, I assumed that this was some sort of error, meant to protect the folder from accidental deletion regardless of the circumstances. Consequently I re-named the folder, and then deleted it successfully, and received no error message.
I went back to the first computer, to copy the new, archived classic folder to my pen drive. When I did, and returned to the second computer, I noticed that the screen was black there, but the disk, still spinning.
I checked to see if it was the display, or the connection, or if the computer was sleeping, or the screen saver activated, but none was the case.
I re-booted, but there was no start-up chime. The disk spun normally (or perhaps more loudly than normal).
I re-booted, holding down P and R, but no results. The display was completely black (i.e., no ilumination whatsoever, not merely a dark screen, but rather black).
I concluded that the source of the problem was what I had done with the classic folder (renaming it or deleting it).
I got the idea of inserting the system disk, to reboot from the CDROM, but the problem was that there was already a software disk inside, and it would not eject when the eject button was pushed.
I found some suggestions online. I rebooted holding down the track-pad button, for example. No results.
I rebooted holding down CMD OPT SHIFT O F, (or whatever the combinations were that were suggested). No results. I cannot even get a terminal screen to appear, much less a gray screen.
If I close the lid while the computer is running, the computer will NOT go into sleep mode. (So much for the suggestion about forcing an eject from sleep mode).
I noticed a comment online that there might be a force-eject hole inside the felt, but I do not know how to move the felt back well enough to see, nor do I know where to look, or whether there is even such a hole on this model. (if you know of a diagram or photograph online, please direct me)
(Incidentally, if it is any help regarding the model, it is of serial no. UV445CLX_ _ _ , assembled in Taiwan)
How can I force eject the CDROM inside?
Is the solution to reboot from the system software disk, once I succeed in ejecting the CDROM?

Answer 1

You cannot boot an iBook from an external USB drive--only a firewire drive. Actually, the drive is just a drive--it is the enclosure that determines USB vs. FireWire. If you could find an appropriate firewire enclosure, you could remove the drive from the USB enclosure and place it in a firewire enclosure and then be able to boot from that. Or you could just purchase an external firewire drive if those are available where you are.
FireWire external drives are quite useful. One option would be to mount the external drive on the good iBook, format it properly for OS X with Disk Utility, and then use a program like Super Duper to make an exact clone of your internal hard drive. This is a popular way of backing up your stuff. You can boot from either the internal or the external. This means that if your internal hard drive were to die, you would have all your stuff on the external, and could run off of that. Since you are already using the USB for backup, it would probably be best to acquire a new firewire drive for troubleshooting and testing if you decide to go this route, since you really don't want to lose your existing backup.
If you did have a bootable clone, you could see if the sick iBook would boot from it or not. However, it may be more productive to pursue your other thread about the boot problem. I see that Richard has joined the thread as I had hoped he would. He actually works on iBooks and is very knowledgeable.
Also, if you do get the second ibook working and want to install OS9, you might want to post a question in the "Mac OS X v 10.3 Panther and earlier" forum. I'm not up on this myself, but I believe there is something about installing OS 9 drivers while formating or something like that. I believe the smart guys on that forum could give you some guidance so that you can avoid the problems you encountered earlier.
Good luck!