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With the introduction of the Quicksilver G4 Apple stopped including a CD/DVD eject button on the face of the computer. Apple had switched to using a keyboard base eject button and with the proper extension in OS 9, that button would eject the CD tray. IF you do not have an Apple keyboard with the Eject button, then pressing [F12] will work in its place, but only under OS X. In OS 9 you had to use a script that is hard to find these days.

Apple included an eject script in the Eject Extras folder on original Quicksilver OS 9 install. This script would eject the CD/DVD tray when clicked on. There is also an eject button in the OS 9 version of iTunes that can be used. If all else fails, you can restart the computer holding down the mouse button and that will force the CD/DVD drive to eject. Here are Apple’s instructions on how to mechanically eject a disk from the DVD drive on a Power Mac G4.

If the drive has failed or is a CD-RW only drive, then you should upgrade it with an MCE internal 20X Power Mac upgrade.

Please also consider that if your copy of Tiger is gray in color, it may be hard coded to the computer it shipped with. Black-labeled OS X install discs work on most Macs, but gray-labeled Apple media is intended to restore computers to original factory condition.