IMac ejects 10.4 installation disk at startup

I screwed my system up by means of a Stupid UNIX Trick (tm) in Single-User Mode, and now all system files (including the kernel) have been moved to the /tmp directory. When I go to reinstall the system, the iMac ejects the system disk at startup. Holding down 'C,' holding down 'Option,' etc. don't work. Never had any issues with the drive before, and it's running the latest firmware. What gives?
Alternately, is there anything out there that will get me a command prompt at startup so that I can un-gork my system, or at least move files to an external drive?

Thanks, but the problem is that everything on the HD has been moved, including the kernel and all operating system files, so booting into single-user mode doesn't work. It's actually how I messed things up in the first place -- I booted into single-user mode after having some problems booting normally, then ran fsck. fsck found problems with two Chinese-language files that I had for some reason put in the / directory; Chinese characters in filenames display as "???????" at the commant prompt.
So like some kind of genius, I typed "mv ./?* tmp" and hit enter, realizing about 1/100th of a second later what I'd done. Too late: 'ls' 'cd' 'mv' and other commands were no longer working, and thus my travails began.

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willemhb wrote:
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robinmarie1018 wrote:
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IMac ejects 10.4 installation disk at startup

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