You mean the original OS X beta? That's why. It will not run on this machine, that beta is only designed for Year 2000 and older Mac models. You'd need to have the computer's clock set to a date before May 15, 2001 at minimum to try booting it, and even then as I said it never was issued for the G4 PowerBook. Whether someone somewhere kludged it to work or not, I can't find any info on.
Edit: Even further, it won't work from FireWire or a USB stick anyway apparently, another thread here details this:
- You cannot install this release of Mac OS X on a FireWire or USB disk. This release of Mac OS X provides limited support for FireWire hard disks. While you cannot use a FireWire disk as your Mac OS X startup disk, you can store documents on a FireWire disk.