17" iSight model - need help

Question

Hi, I just received an imac 17" iSight the other day off of ebay. I am working to become an ACMT, so I wanted some machines to practice on. Let me give you all of the background.
When I first received the machine, it had an LCD issue which I took care of. I then wiped the hard drive (via TDM) and ran AHT. It gave me an error on the primary SATA drive. I went ahead and removed it, as well as the extra DIMM module. Reran AHT... looped it 5 times with no errors. I then tried installing Tiger from a retail install DVD... but the Apple just shows up and never gives me the spinning wheel. I let it sit for about 30 minutes and got nowhere. I then tried starting it up via TDM from a Powermac G4 running Tiger. It started, but took about 20 minutes to get to the desktop (Note that this system takes about 30 seconds to start when booted on the Powermac). I then rebooted the machine, but this time used Verbose mode to see if I could diagnose what was taking so long. Everything seemed to go quickly until it got to this -
*Sept 1 2009 - Localhost mDNSResponder: mDNSplatform SendUDP send to failed to send pack on Interface ID01807800 lo0/4 to 224.0.0.257:5333 skt 9 error -1 errno 65 (No route to host) 2622825713*
It would sit on this, and then repeat it about 5-10 times until it said
*Netinfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local*
*Firewire (OHCI) AppleID 52 builtin: 1250 bus resets in last minute*
It would then repeat the process about three times over, until it eventually started up and got me to the desktop. Once there, you may as well have called it "Mac OS 10.4 Turtle" it was so slow. I checked the onboard diagnostic LEDS while the machine was running, they were fine (1,2 & 3 were lit). There is no SATA drive installed and only the onboard RAM (512 MB) was installed. No peripherals of any kind were installed other than the Target Disk used to start. The Target Disk is a known good disk and can start up other PowerPC machines via TDM perfectly.
Any suggestions? I'm kind of at a dead end other than what Verbose mode told me... seems like it has something to do with networking? Kind of strange.

Answer 1

Someone more tecky/geeky knowledgeable will need to chime in here regarding the verbose messages.
As to why the computer will not start up from a known good target drive.......Could be many reasons. Power issue? Who knows?
Since you purchased a "used" computer, no telling what the original owner did to it or what is really wrong with it unless they honestly told you! You're buying someone else troubles/problems. It's a chance you take when purchasing off of eBay, Craigslist, etc.
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As you may probably already know, the iSight models are not user repairable (except for RAM installations) when it comes to hardware. You will be hard pressed trying to find parts for it on your own. You just may end up taking the comp to your local AASP.
Good luck!