I recently decided to try out my iMac G3 again that I got a year ago at the VCF East, since I haven't used it for a while, and it's just been sitting on my bench. I do remember that when I used it a while back, I was able to boot off my external DVD drive to install Mac OS 10.3 from CD. This is because the original internal drive refused to give up discs, and I would often damage them trying to pry them out, since it is a pain to take the computer then the DVD drive apart. So, long story short, booting from install discs from an external drive worked. But now, it doesn't. My drive can read the discs once the iMac has booted up, but won't boot from the discs when I hold the C key, or show up in the menu when I hold the option key. I tried unplugging the internal drive's IDE connector, since I thought the internal drive might be contributing to the problem, but still no luck. The reason that I want to boot from an install disc is so that I can erase the internal hard drive and its partitions, and reinstall a fresh copy MacOS 9. Neither Drive Setup in my MacOS 9 partition or Disk Utility in my Mac OS X 10.3 partition will allow me to erase the internal drive, since it is the startup disk. So, I am open to other solutions, or would love to know why all of a sudden my computer refuses to boot from install discs in an external drive. Thanks!