I think my CD drive is dead-can I hook up an external CD drive to my Emac?

when I insert a CD I hear a couple of clicking type sounds and then the disk ejects. DVD's are playing fine. I tried repairing the disk and booting from one of my install CD's and it didn't work.
Thanks

DVDs and CSs operate at different wavelengths and all drives on the market use separate LED lasers for the DVD and CD functions. It's not uncommon for one LED to fail while the other still operates. Before replacing the drive, through, try running a CD lens cleaner through the drive for a few passes. DVD and CD LEDs in all cases I'm aware of run through different lenses, so it's possible your drive's CD lens has enough grime on it to prevent it from working while the DVD lens is still relatively clear.
If that doesn't fix the problem, then it's easy to attach an external optical drive and use that. Go with Firewire; while your 1.25 GHz eMac has USB 2.0, USB driver support is more problematic while Firewire support is pretty solid. A Firewire drive will also allow you to use the external drive as a boot device per Startup Manager: Select a Startup Volume.
OS X 10.3 and later will support disc burning to an external drive from the Finder, so you don't even need additional software such as Toast (although an optical drive bundled with Toast will give you more control over disc burning than what's built into the Finder).

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