Been pulling my hair out trying to get the Morphos install disc to boot - due to a (pretty sure) faulty CD drive in the mac mini.

It's happily reading real pressed discs, but any CD-R I insert it insists is blank. It's even happily successfully burning CDs it's just not reading them afterwards.

From what I've read, I don't believe the Mac Mini G4 is compatible with the OF USB boot method (and to be fair, I tried anyway.. :) )

So I'm pretty sure the optical drive is on its last legs, do I have any options that I'm not thinking of:

1. New optical drive/New mac
2. Try and clean the lens (I'm doing this tomorrow when I grab some cleaning kit)
3. Try a different variety of disc (for instance, I don't have any RW discs, but will get one tomorrow - I know disc drives can be really flaky on the way out and be picky so worth a shot)

Is there another way? Can I image the hard drive? Does the mini boot from an external CD drive (I read conflicting reports)?

Do I just say "screw it" and buy a G5 Powermac?