ok Trumpy, you are a linux guy, so here goes, and I say in advance that this is a long, long shot but it might work. It has saved me in similar situations before:
first put the CD in the drive,
then:
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=~/cd.iso
then:
mount -o loop -t iso9660 ~/cd.iso /some/directory/
then:
cd /some/directory/
and
ls -l
and see what you have...
basically this makes a direct bit for bit copy of the CD named "cd.iso" on your hard drive, that you can mount like it was a filesystem or a cd drive in its own right, and browse/copy/whatever with all the files contained therein..
to unmount this, type
umount /some/dir
Hope it helps! it has saved me a few times, but a little luck is involved with this trick as well..
