cannot upgrade to Tiger on my flat-panel G4 Imac

[sngourd]

I have a flat-panel Imac running system 10.0 that I am trying to upgrade to Tiger. i have purchased full-version (not upgrade) Tiger disks twice from two different vendors and both do not read on my computer. The computer says that the disks are blank and asks if I want to initialize them. I ejected each one (of course, I didn't initialize). The computer reads commercial movie DVDs just fine so I know there is not an issue with the DVD reader. This is a terribly frustrating problem that I have spent nearly a month on--can't find anything on this at Apple's site or anywhere on the web. According to everything I have read, the computer should have the system requirements to upgrade to Tiger without a firmware update, and any problems relating to failure to upgrade that I have read about do not talk about reading the disk as blank.

The obvious next step that I probably should take is finding another Mac to put the system disks into to confirm that they do actually have a system on them. I suspect that they do, though, since they were bought from two different vendors (unless anybody knows about widespread numbers of blank disks being sold as system disks from what seem to be reputable sellers).

Mostly, I am trying to upgrade to Tiger so I can get a third-party wireless web card for the computer, so it can be hooked into my wireless network. Also, Tiger does seem to have a few better features.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[stephgreene]

If you have another computer handy with a DVD drive you could always set up the iMac in Target Disk mode to the other computer and then install Tiger that way. I would take the DVDs to the Apple store and pop them in to one of their computers to see if they are readable. Apple will sell you CDs of Tiger, for a price, if you exchange your Tiger DVD. Don't know about their rules of where you purchased the initial Tiger DVD.

[DeltaMac]

You might also have software problems with your present Mac OS X.
Are the Tiger disks black with a silver X? or grey with a particular Mac model listed on the label?
If black, put the disk in the drive and shut your Mac down. Ignore any disk messages for now, just shut it down with the disk in the drive.
Restart, holding the letter C - to force your Mac to try booting from the DVD.

If it boots to the disk, continue with the install. Your OS X is not likely to be 10.0 - but even 10.1 will not update, and, at the screen where you choose the drive, you will have to click on the Options button, and then choose to Archive & Install.
If your Mac still chooses to boot to the internal system, instead of the disk, then you could try cleaning the drive with one of those disks that have the tiny brushes imbedded in the surface. That might help.

[sngourd]

The disks are black with a silver "X". I tried starting the computer while holding down the "c" key but it still booted to the old OS on the hard disk. And yes, I was wrong about the software installed on the hard disk being 10.0, it is 10.1.4. I guess my next step is to find another computer to try the target disk mode, or to put the disks in to make sure they work.