Software update caked startup disk?

Hello all, I posted this yesterday, as my first post, and I guess it was deleted ....
If I am missing something about posting, could someone message me? THX


I recently retrieved access to my old mac [g4 dual 500] that I had lost passwords for and which had been dormant for awhile.
I did this by starting in single user and creating a new admin account.
[starting the whole intro again and everything]

Once back in, I could reset the passwords for the old accounts jsut fine.
So I was ready to switch users and clean up shop. I had planned to get this machine running in my studio again, and wanted to reset it as much as possible. I should also mention that it had a slaved drive that had only 38 MB left out of 40GB [wasn't my doing ]
Before switching users, answered the call of the Software updater.

Software Update had a version of 10.4.xxx[?] ready to install, so I clicked OK, and waited. I have no original disks for this machine, and have no clue what my roommates that shared it with me had done in a couple years. So for all I know, there was another OS upgrade done in the last couple years that I wasn't aware of ... anyway, here's what happened:

The machine rebooted with no chime, [was already silent before]
it then hung on the gray Apple, and the spinner never came up ...
even after an hour.
I am unable to invoke any keyboard commands while it is in this state.
I couldn't enter Single User ...
I couldn't zap the NVRAM ...
I couldn't enter Open Firmware ...
I couldn't boot from CD.

So,
I'll spare the details of trying to boot from CD ...
I reset the CUDA button [or whatever it's called nowadays, PMU?]
That didn't do a thing, replaced battery too, nada.

I had another old G4 with 10.2.8 on it.
I booted from that drive finally, and ran Disk Utility to verify and repair the original disk and permissions by setting it to slave and re-selecting the 10.2 drive as the startup disk from a CD boot.
[ok, maybe I WON'T spare you the details of the CD booting ;P]
Everything reported back as having been done successfully by the disk utility.
It still won't boot, but now the spinner at least comes up and sits forever ... I left it overnight to be sure.
I DID notice though, that it said "Thread count is 26, and should be 3".
After running the utility a couple more times to make sure, it still found that thread count difference, but also still said right afterwards that "the disk has been repaired".


Any ideas?
I can navigate the drive fine as a slave, is there a way I can do something by hand?

dangit.

Thanks for helping folks!

 

No ideas?

A friend suggested that maybe people might think I'm asking for help to break into a computer ...
That's totally not the case, I have full access to the entire disk already, I just can't tell why the thing won't boot from that disk now.

UPDATE:

I can now invoke all keyboard commands at boot.

any help?

thanks again.

 

I finally found a .DMG that is supposed to be used on that generation Mac in order for 10.4 to work correctly. How would I apply a patch to a folder that isn't booting tho?

Any insight would be great ... These machines have deffinately paid for themselves, but I still would like to avoid a new OS purchase for a computer that. It was Apple that screwed the system with a software update, for the price of a new copy of OSX, i cold get an even faster G4 with it already installed.

Please help!
ANY ideas what could have happened?

Jumpers?
Dependencies of a slave volume?
[i DID read somewhere that software update should be applied to a SINGLE disk configuration only, not sure how true that is ...]

Any ideas of what I can rule out at least?

thanks