I gave my old G4 iBook to my granddaughter some time ago and it is ill. When trying to boot up, there is a grinding noise and the screen never gets past the rotating gear. I inserted an old OS X Install Disk and was able, after a 20 minute wait, to boot up from the OS X DVD and do a Repair Permissions which also took well over an hour. But now, nothing works for boot up, so I think this baby id dead as the problems are well beyond the HD.
However, since nothing works to boot up, my old DVD is stuck inside and I would like to recover it for old time's sake. Any ideas?

That sounds like the hard drive has gone bad. It may be as simple as putting in a new hard drive. Have you considered taking it to CityMac to have them take a look at it?

Well, I am convinced the HD has gone bad but since it will not boot up from the DVD, it would seem to indicate the mother board or some other internal also has gone bad. My son and I were in City Mac last week (he was looking at a Mac laptop to replace his PC which tanks all the time) and I asked about this iBook problem. I know I can drop in a new HD for little cost but I wonder if this old machine is worth the cost of a City Mac check out.

Well, the only other thing that I can think of is get out the screwdrivers.