PowerPC :: IBook G4 Booting - Gray Screen With Apple Turning Gear Comes On Start Up

A friend of mine brought over his 14" iBook G4, 1.33GHz, 60GB HDD and 1.25 GB RAM. The problem with it is that upon start-up, the grey screen with the apple/turning gear comes up, then after a few moments a blue screen will appear, though no box showing the start-up process. I've run a few basic diagnostics on this, including the lovely disk utility (which did nothing), I've run fsck, zapped the PRAM, etc, no success as of yet. At one point, I received a screen with alternating folders, one showing the smiley mac face, the other folder with a flashing "?". I cannot replicate this for the life of me. I have attempted to acquire files via TDM, though am not able to see the hard drive despite using 2 different laptops. Possibly the firewire cable itself is spent, though it's brand new! Here is where I become increasingly frustrated: I ask my friend for the boot disks as the ones for my own 12" iBook don't work (for whatever reason). He tells me that he loaded Leopard this summer (currently running 10.5.2, no updates loaded since), then proceeds to bring over boot discs for a MacBook...:headdesk: To begin with, it seemed like the HDD was fried, however, after running disk utility (and not hearing any negative sounds), it does appear that the HDD is fine. I'm thinking a kernel panic, though not sure how to resolve these.