Cannot get OS to boot

Several days ago I got a blue screen with nothing but a cursor. If I try and boot the machine I get the apple and the pinwheelthen nothing but the blue screen and cursor.
I can access the drives by holding the Option key and starting the machine but, even selecting the drives it will still stop at the blue screen. I have used disk utility to check the drive and I can also access the drive using command line. I have run all the checks, from Disk Utility, on the drive and it says that the drive is OK.
I re-installed OS 10.4. Still the same blue sccreen. Since this is not my data drive I zeroed the HD, trying to make sure the old boot record was gone, re-installed the OS on the HD and still blue screen.
My G4 has been running OS X since the first release with no problem. Now this!
So, now a question. What could possibily be causing the OS to not boot? A chip on the motherboard or on the HD? Or what?
I'm out of ideas.
TIA, Scott
G4   Mac OS X (10.4.5)  

It's the original. That would make it approx. 2 or 3 years old.
I'll give that a try.
Scott

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