How do I remove a dvd from a drive on an iBook not responding to usual tips, etc.?

All iBooks have an internal optical drive.

Is it a slot-loading drive or tray-loading drive?

(Slot-loading, I would guess if it truly has Mac OS X 10.5.8 installed.)

When someone says they've "tried everything," yet come here for help, we need a list of the things they've tried, otherwise how can we know which "tip or trick" they may not know about?

Sometimes a disc will eject if you shut down the iBook and hold down the trackpad button during startup. Is this one of those things you've tried?

Put two (or three, depending on thickness) business cards on top of each other. When you power up the computer and the drive starts to spin, push them in and force the spinning DVD to stop. The DVD will eject right away.

As I said, unless you tell us "every method" that you have used, we can't know what to tell you that you may not have used.

Here are a couple of other methods using Terminal:

There are two commands that can be used in the Terminal (located in Applications/Utilities) which can be used to force disk ejection:

The first command to try is drutil tray eject. Simply type in this command and press return.

The other method takes a little more work but can work in instances where the first method fails.

1. Type the command drutil list into the Terminal and press return . This will provide a list of all currently connected removable devices. [ScreenShot 1-DiskEject] -- connect FireWire/USB drives for this
2. Use the command drutil tray eject 1

In the above command, the number "1" should be replaced with whatever drive number you obtained in the first step.

These are directly from cnet.com:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10333570-263.html

There are other methods listed there, too, which you may have already tried, but may work if you haven't yet tried them.

Good luck.

I have also read to use some double sided sticky tape, taped to a flat, thin card and try to grab the disc that way.

Others have suggested holding the iBook on its side as you attempt to eject.