Imac cd drive busted, need to re-install os

Hi all, newbie here
I believe I have the original bondi blue imac(rev.a). I'm running the latest version of 0S 9 that you can possibly run. I've had this machine since 1998! I put more RAM in it sometime in '99 so I've got 84 I think.
The only thing this machine is used for these days is the internet and some light page design Quark. And it BARELY does those things. SO SLOW!!! This is still all we'd like to use it for so I'd like to run the bare minimum on it, optimized just for surfing the internet.
What I'd like to do is a clean re-install so maybe it'll run faster. My cd drive (tray loading) won't read anything. Everytime I try I get a "disk is unreadable, do you want to format) error.
I'd like to fix this at little or no cost. Also I have access to a PowerPC G5 at work so I could download stuff and transfer it on my usb disk.
Any ideas you have are greatly appreciated!
busted bondi blue imac (rev.a) Mac OS 9.2.x tray loading

Hi, Ralyn -
Welcome to Apple's Discussions.
My cd drive (tray loading) won't read anything. Everytime I try I get a "disk is unreadable, do you want to format) error.
That would tend to indicate the drive may be okay - the Mac knows it is there, it knows there is a disk in it, and it tries to read it. All those indicate the drive is working.
One thing that can cause those symptoms is dirty lenses inside the drive, such as an accumulation of dust. Try getting an audio-CD cleaning disk or kit, and using that to clean the drive.
That model iMac, a Bondi 233MHz model, has very limited boot-source capabilities. It does not have a SCSI port nor a firewire port, and is not USB bootable. That pretty much limits it to the internal hard drive, and the CD drive. You will probably need to find a way to get the CD drive to work in order to install any OS.
One possible alternative - remove the hard drive, put it in a multi-drive capable Mac, such as an early G4, then clean install a universal (boot-any-Mac) install of OS 9.2.1 on it. Once that's done, bring it back to the iMac.
I would not suggest installing OSX on a machine that slow.

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