Went to my local computer shop today to drop off some recycling (an old socket Intel 478 Celeron machine and a bunch of IDE CD-ROM drives) and sitting right inside the garage bay, I spotted a Graphite Power Mac G4 there surrounded by a sea of beige box PCs. I immediately talked to the shop owner about and he let me take a look. It was dirty as heck. Sticker residue all over the front handle, dirt all over the top of the case, grime on the inside floor of the case. I immediately noticed there was no hard drive installed, but everything else inside the case was intact. I powered it up and it went almost immediately to the question mark folder, but at least I knew it powered on. The sticker on the back said it was a 400 MHz G4 with 64 MB RAM and a DVD drive.
Specs: 400 MHz G4. DVD Drive. Zip Drive. 256 MB SDRAM (came installed with one 64 MB stick, I added three more 64 MB sticks), ATI Rage 128.
Problem is, I can't get a working installation of OS X on it.
I know that it is way too slow to try to run anything like 10.4 or 10.5, so I've only tried 10.1 and 10.2 so far on two different drives: a 20 GB Seagate, and a 30 GB Quantum.
Here's where I'm at with each drive, fresh formatting in Mac OS Extended each time via disk utility.
Seagate 20 GB:
1) Installed OS X 10.2 just fine. On first boot, I get the prohibited symbol.
2) Installed OS X 10.2 Server without issue. On first boot, I get the gray Apple boot screen with distorted noise on the screen.
3) Attempted to install OS X 10.1. The drive isn't recognized.
Quantum 30 GB:
4) Installed OS X 10.2. On first boot, prohibited symbol.
5) Installed OS X 10.2 Server. First boot up prohibited symbol again.
6) Attempted to install OS X 10.1. Install failed. "Could not set file attributes error."
7) The most interesting. I inserted the Quantum drive into my Dual 1 GHz MDD and installed OS X 10.2. It installed perfectly and booted in the MDD. I then put the drive into the Graphite G4, and on boot, it looks fine for the first 15-20 seconds, and then I get garbled noise all over the boot screen and the loading wheel keeps spinning, but I never get a boot.
I've tried re-seating the RAM, tried a bunch of different sticks in different slots, combinations of different tricks, obviously different hard drives. Anyone know what is going on? Graphics card problems? I really don't know where else to go?
Specs: 400 MHz G4. DVD Drive. Zip Drive. 256 MB SDRAM (came installed with one 64 MB stick, I added three more 64 MB sticks), ATI Rage 128.

Problem is, I can't get a working installation of OS X on it.
I know that it is way too slow to try to run anything like 10.4 or 10.5, so I've only tried 10.1 and 10.2 so far on two different drives: a 20 GB Seagate, and a 30 GB Quantum.
Here's where I'm at with each drive, fresh formatting in Mac OS Extended each time via disk utility.
Seagate 20 GB:
1) Installed OS X 10.2 just fine. On first boot, I get the prohibited symbol.
2) Installed OS X 10.2 Server without issue. On first boot, I get the gray Apple boot screen with distorted noise on the screen.
3) Attempted to install OS X 10.1. The drive isn't recognized.
Quantum 30 GB:
4) Installed OS X 10.2. On first boot, prohibited symbol.
5) Installed OS X 10.2 Server. First boot up prohibited symbol again.
6) Attempted to install OS X 10.1. Install failed. "Could not set file attributes error."

7) The most interesting. I inserted the Quantum drive into my Dual 1 GHz MDD and installed OS X 10.2. It installed perfectly and booted in the MDD. I then put the drive into the Graphite G4, and on boot, it looks fine for the first 15-20 seconds, and then I get garbled noise all over the boot screen and the loading wheel keeps spinning, but I never get a boot.

I've tried re-seating the RAM, tried a bunch of different sticks in different slots, combinations of different tricks, obviously different hard drives. Anyone know what is going on? Graphics card problems? I really don't know where else to go?