Can't boot from new HD: OS X, 233 MHz iMac

The hard drive on my son's 233 MHz iMac recently stopped booting. I purchased a 40 GB Maxtor drive and installed it in the computer. After partitioning with the Disk utility, I installed Panther on the 7.7 GB partition. All attempts to boot off the new drive have been unsuccessful. I get a gray screen with alternating question mark and smiling mac icon. I have searched through this forum and read the FAQ. I have not found any solution to my problem.
I don't remember the exact RAM configuration, but I think it's 256 MB. In any case, we have been running Panther on this machine for quite a while.
I have done the following:
1. Check to make sure the drive is jumpered as "master."
2. Checked voltage on PRAM battery (3.67 V).
3. Reset PRAM.
4. Reset motherboard (CUDA chip?).
5. Tried booting with no keyboard or mouse attached.
Disk Utility recognizes the drive. Set Startup Disk recognizes the drive and the fact that it has OS X installed.
Thanks for any additional help you can provide. (This problem is making me wonder if his old hard drive in fact went belly up, or if there is some other problem.)
David

The non-retail, non-original system disks may have specific drivers which only work for the Mac they originally came from. Even if they did work before, a future attempted update may have caused the system confusion. I'd get the disks replaced. The retail Panther disks are black with a white and gray and X logo, and do not say Update on them. Also if your system went through a forced restart, you may need to repair the directory:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
If repairing the directory first does not solve the problem but does show the drive appears to be OK of the machine being unable to boot, once you have the right system disks, do an Archive and Install:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120
If the drive does not appear to be OK, the next question is, is the data on the drive backed up?

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