IMac won't read a purchased used promo cd

Question

Hi there,
I've ripped about 200 CD's to MP3 and I want to rip the songs
from an Audio CD that I purchased over the internet. However,
when I put it in my iMac, it tries to read it for about 30 seconds,
grinds and all, but then spits the disc back out. This hasn't
happened before.
I played the disc fine on a portable MP3 CD player that I've got,
and it played fine. There are barely any marks at all on the CD,
and I wiped it with my sleeve from center to edge to clear off the
marks that I could.
The only other thing that I could think is the problem is that on
the front of the CD jacket is stamped "For Promotional Use Only".
So someone got it as a promo from a record company but they
eventually sold it to this store that resold it over the internet to me.
The problem is that I can't exactly say to the store that sold it to me
that the disc is defective, because I can play it fine in my portable
MP3 CD player. It also played fine on my home stereo, although I
haven't listened to the whole album yet through my home stereo.
But I'd really like to be able to listen to the CD on my iPod and I
can't do that if I can't rip the tracks. Any suggestions?
I tried putting the disc in with iTunes open, and with iTunes closed,
and either way it just tries to read it for about 20-30 seconds, then
spits it back out. No error messages or anything appear.
I also highly doubt that it's copy controlled because it was made in
1996. They don't manufacture "Promo" CD's any differently do they?
And at any rate, I don't think people were even ripping CD's back in
1996.
It's kind of a hard to find disc, too, but this online company (with
brick-and-mortar stores as well) has additional copies of the CD
for sale. I'm thinking I might buy another copy of it and see if that
one works.
It'd be great if I could get this one to work, but I don't know what else
to try. A friend of mine has a Windows box, but he's never ripped any
music before and was going to ask me how to rip music for his MP3
player when he got around to it. So there aren't any other computers
available that I can try the disc in, neither Mac nor Windows machines.
Oh, and I did check and my iMac is reading other discs. I put in another
Audio CD with iTunes running and it identified the disc immediately and
was ready to rip it.
Any help?

Answer 1

Thanks for the suggestion about making a copy of that. I had thought of doing that but have never done it before on a Mac. I just had PC's before this computer. I don't have any other computer to try the CD on.
I just bought a CD over the weekend from the store that didn't rip properly at first either. It ripped at like "2x" speed through most of the disc, and usually it gets up to 20x by the end of the rip. Also, it stalled during the rip of the last track and it ended up being too annoying to listen so I re-ripped the whole album. I haven't listened to it yet, but the ripped was much more smooth. It stalled during the middle this time, but only for a second, so if it's got a pop or blip, one of those isn't that bad compared to what I had. It was the Red Hot Chili Peppers "Californication" CD this time and it's brand new.
But I may try making a copy of the other CD, the non-promo one which seemed to mount okay but not rip. Is there a free version of Toast, or is there another program that is free that I can use to make a copy that you know of?
Thanks for your help.