imac 17" 1.25 ghz

Hi
I wonder if I could get some advice.
I recently picked up an imac 17" from a surplus sale.
There was a note on it that the HD had been 'wiped' (Company policy)
I had some experience with macs, mostly use earlier G4s at work.
The imac came with restore discs and during the preview would only boot to the question mark and the smiley face
There was the initial boot up 'boing' so I assumed the logic board was fine and that all I had to do was reinstall the os.
The dvd door would open upon request via the keyboard.

Anyways, got the mac $50 thought it was a steal.
But, when I insert the restore discs nothing happens.
I tried holding down the 'c' key.
Resetting the pram.
Cleaning the disc.
MAc had a 1 gb ram chip in the user slot.
tried to do a target boot but there is a lock of some sort. I see a padlock and a password message.
I have tried to hear the dvd spinning upon starting but it seems to do nothing.
Could it be defective?

If so, can someone suggest a suitable replacement drive?
I'm assuming I do not have to buy a $100 apple drive but would any drive do as long as it was the correct type?
Thanks in advance for any help.

Do do not buy an Apple optical drive. In fact they only install other maker's equipment and do not manufacture them. Devil of a job but there are instructions on the net. Any ATAPI IDE drive is the go but prefer Pioneer.H ere is one:-

iMac G4 Take-apart for Drive and Ram upgrades

Remember the hard drive and optical run off one IDE cable which is pretty delicate so handle with care. Hard drive must be set to master, optical to slave.

That looks like fun.
Thanks for the advice.
I will see what I can turn up.

imac G4 DVD Drive

Is this a imac G4 17" or Imac g5 17" that you have?

As I purchased an imac G4 800mhz about 3-4 years ago secondhand with a faulty DVD drive. I replaced it with a Pioneer DVD drive. Just had to remove the front so it would work in the machine correctly. If you have no worries about dismantling the Mac then go for it. If I rememeber correctly the IDE had to be set to Cable select as the machine did not reconize if it was set to master or slave.

The Imac G4 800Mhz I had has 2 memory slots one that was user upgrade able and one that was not meant to be (sodim and a standard sdram slot). But as I had had the machine apart I decided to max the memory out on it(1GB).