PowerPC :: IBook Won't Recognize DVD Player / But Playing CDs

Part of my iBook says there is an initialization error when I open up the DVD program, and the other part of it says I have have no drive at all. But I have tried everything that I was told to do. Basically I have a problem with my white iBook Laptop, a G3-4 800 mhz, which runs on OSX-10.14.11, and has 384 sd-ram

It has a DVD application program, but opening it just gives an initialization error. The date on the App is something from earlier this year, so it's not that old. It has the corporate "DVD" player logo. (but it won't open) If I drop down the Apple menu at the top corner, "About this Mac" I see the list, and if I select Burners, it says No Burner Found. If I look for CD or Audio devices, there is nothing like that on the list but i can find the cd drive under ATA drives (it has the HD listed, and then a CD drive). When I open Disk Utility to find out about 'repairing disk permissions' all I see on the left side of the screen are 2 drives: the hard drive and a CD drive (LG Model 8245B), and I cannot select 'repair permissions' or 'verify' because they are in light grey (un-selectable). If I click on 'First Aid" bacically nothing happens. It's sort of like "nothing's broken, nothing to fix."

So I went on to reset the PRAM, as this was the last suggestion
someone gave me.

Some interesting things: The thing plays CD's. It detects a CD drive, like I said. There is no CD/Audio player Application, anywhere (i was looking to see if it was read/write). There is also, buried somewhere, an older Apple DVD application, for an Apple DVD player. It wants to run on OS-9. So I open OS-9, and after OS9 has opened, it tells me that OS-9 doesn't support it.

The DVD application I mentioned earlier (it's about 28 MB) is newer, and runs on OS-X 10.14. (So.. yes, this was an OS-9 computer which got upgraded to OS 10.4.11)

Lastly, it came from a brother in law who is a filmmaker, and I know that he used it for DVD's. I was told i could also burn with it.(it doesn't burn cd's right now) He re-set some names and passwords when he gave it to me; from what I can see, all the 'permissions' are ok, and set to my name. I have his passwords in case I need them.

If the computer has forgotten that it has a DVD drive, then I can't run OS 10 (which is a dvd), if it were to crash. This worries me, since I had to do this with my old Pismo only 2 months after buying it (at least it had a dvd drive!) I lifted the keyboard to see if there was a label on the cd-dvd player.
Nothing. I can't pull it out (like I could in my old Pismo) to examine the underside. How does it come out? (it's a tray-loader)

Before I start trying to remove the drive, just to see what it says...

Is there any program on the iBook which will actually detect, and tell me what hardware I have? I think that the computer still thinks it has the old cd drive in it, even though it was obviously upgraded to a dvd drive. If I could find out the brand I could maybe download some software driver
for it..?

(i am sort of afraid to go poking around the system files if I know that I cannot use the OS- 10 startup disk when it crashes (since it is a dvd)...

So is it beginning to sound like there WAS a dvd drive in there first, which burned out, and was replaced by a cheaper LG (that's Dell) CD-R drive