IMac G5 20 won't read leopard OS disc & ejects it in 30 seconds

I have an iMac G5 20" 2.1 GHz iSight computer that boots up to the flashing file symbol, which usually means it doesn't have an operating system installed on the hard drive. The previous apple computers I have bought, when I insert the Leopard Mac OS X disc, the apple logo will appear and it will begin to install Leopard on the hard drive. This iMac G5 will except the Leopard disc, but within 30 seconds it will eject it. I tried connecting the computer to a macbook through a firewire cable to see if the hard drive appeared on the desktop of the macbook and it did not.
Does this mean the hard drive isn't recognized or the superdrive isn't working?
Please help... I don't have a clue what's going on with this iMac.
Thank you in advance!

The hard drive either needs its directory repaired, does not have any data on it for the MacBook to read, or is dead.
If you don't have a backup, these recovery tools may help if they have a version written for PowerPC Macs:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-1689
If you have a backup, follow that link to the point about repairing the directory.
Do not attempt to format it from the MacBook as the hard drive won't be recognized by the iMac if you do.
is what the disk needs to look like to work.   It should not have a Mac model name, nor OEM, or Update/Dropin written on it.
If you have the correct disk, and Disk Utility says it can be formatted with Apple Partition Map HFS+ formatting:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3003 and you can't erase and install from that disk, you may need to replace the PRAM battery.
Otherwise you may need to bring it in for service.

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