Gong nuts trying to replace a hard drive on an early 2008 IMAC

Hi All,
I'll try to be brief.  I thought we were having hard drive issues, because if we tried to reboot once warm we just get the folder with the flashing ?  SOmetimes the computer would go days before it was kind enough to reboot.
I managed to keep the computer running long enough (by putting it outside to keep it cool) to get a full timemchine back up.
I went and bought a WD green 1 Tb hard drive.  The mechanical installation was no problem due to the many tips available although I necglected to mark the 2 identical connectors top and bottom of the monitor (the chincy 2 wire connectors).  However when I tried to boot up,I just got a blank white screen, then the flashing ?  I tried loading the snow leopard DVD, but it popped out on the floor. 
I popped the cover off the old hard drive and there was no signs of heat damage.  So I blew it out with compressed air and reassemled it.  I reinstalled the original hard drive and got it to run by holding the shift key down after the "sound". I thentried the DVD reader.  The DVD reader would read our older (original) OSX disc, but not CD's we had burned and not the snow leopard disk.
While replacing the HD, I noticed that the circuit board top left was discolored whitish in the center area,more or less.
So my questions are:
1. Will the 1 Tb drive work (was told it would @ the store).
2. Do I need the Snow leopard DVD to complete the install and could I buy a remote DVD player to load if mine is toast?
3.  DoI have enough bad symptomsto makeyou think the computer is toast?
Thanks for any help,
Gary

Thanks for your replies!
Right after I wrote, the dvd player started working again.  With the old HD in, I booted from the disk and went into disk utility to see if I could repair the old HD.  It could not see the old drive.
So I decided to get brave and try the new HD (sorry I did not see your feedback on the green drives, first).  I got  WD because that's what was in there and I had good luck with WD's in the past. Of course, as soon as I fired up, it spit the dvd out.  I tried 4 times and on the last try it read the DVD.
The I used the procedure I saw on GIZMODO (http://gizmodo.com/333319/the-secret-of-the-time-machine+assisted-hard-drive-swa p) to partition the drive correctly and start the resore.  I guess I'll know in 4 hours whether or not I succeeded.
If the green drive works for the time machine swap, should I be good to go?  I went for the green because it was cooler running and the back of the computer always got extremely hot right before it acted up.  Of course, I did a thorough cleaning as part of the repair.
Gary

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