Old Mac 8500- cant see CD on desktop with a CD in machine

Trying to give my Old 8500 tower to a single mom with kid off Craigslist. Used Norton (forgot app name) to scrub my partitioned drive to erase personal information on it. Reimaged drives and installed OS 9.1. It has a Raedon graphics card (dont remember model) and Newer G3 card. Also have a Mitsubisi CD RW 226 SCSI burner.
Think the onboard CD ROM may be dead- cant boot OS off that drive. Booted and installed OS 9.1 off external drive. When I reboot and stick the Raedon CD (or any other) the CD doesnt appear on the desktop. Profile manager sees the drives but says nothing is in them. Cant install Raedon or G3 software cause it doesnt read the CD unless I have a bootable one in the external drive.
Any suggestions before I give it to a Mac cannibal and screw over the poor single mom with kid?

If the drive that age not responding then I'd say it kaput.

When I put an the OS in the external drive and boot of the OS CD it works.
Before I reimaged the drive - all was well.
I would think the drive is functional if you can boot off it, but Im not a Mac guru
Any insight or you still maintain the same opinion?

I'm really not sure you are doing these folks a favour.

So, it works when you boot off the external drive, then the installed OS didn't install the correct drivers. Is it the install disk that came with the Mac or a full retail version. If not then you have to do the OS install from one of those.