mini mac helpppppp

hello everyone.

i have had the mini mac for about 6 years. pretty good computer i enjoy using the system. extremely easy to work and live with. i have come to hit a wall last week. my mac stop working. one night as everyother night i left it on. and when i woke up it was frozen. i try shutting it down by pressing the power button and now it comes to a gray screen. no apple in the middle tho. i have looked into and it says the computer its done. my only options are to buy another one. as much as i want to buy another i want to get this one working.
i know i have to install the OS again but its been 6 years so i dont know where the cd is. another problem is that the mini mac wont read cd or dvds again it gave up but about 3 years ago. my firewire port is not working either. i have my two usb ports working. what can i do to install the OS and still be able to save my information from the computer.
cannot take it to a mac store because im not in the united states and here in venezuela there are no mac stores. well no where i live so yeah.
any advice helpful would be great thanks a lot.

It really sounds like the hard drive died. With no Optical drive and no Firewire it's going to be interesting to try and do a reinstall. Is this a G4 Power PC Mini? I have never been successful booting a G4 from USB. Firewire is the only external boot option on them.

Are you sure your Firewire port is dead? You can get a new Optical drive from OWC but they are not cheap. Also try and find the DVD's that came with your mini as there the Apple hardware test that will tell you what might be wrong.

well the firewire was working fine but out of nowhere it just gave up. i had an external cd/dvd unit that was connected using the firewire port but it wont read it anymore. and well the dvd like i said its been 6 years i cant find it. would i be able to find the dvd online? i don know maybe downloading it from a page or somethin thanks

Time for a new machine alas!