Display dies, then HD, now can't boot from CD? Huh?

I had the apparently common problem with a flickering display on my wife's iBook G3, which up and died last night. So, I figure, that's it, new iBook coming. I linked up the iBook with my PB via FireWire target disk mode, and the HD mounted, no problem. At this point, I should have immediately backed up the HD onto an external HD, but hey, I was all the way in the other chair.
At any rate, I read some threads about the display issues, gave a little squeeze to the left of the trackpad, and, presto! The display springs back to life! Woo-hoo! So, sez I, I'll just hook up the ol' external HD to the iBook and back up from there. But now it won't boot. Just the "Sad Mac" icon on the grey screen.
So, next, I figure something's gone bad with the internal HD, so I'd better boot from the CD and run Disk Utility or Data Rescue or something and cover myself. But, now the iBook (with nicely operating display, thanks) won't boot up from the CD. Aaargh! So, I return to my PB and target mode, and I can mount the combo drive (and startup CD) fine from my PB, but the iBook HD now doesn't show up. Huh?
So, why can't I boot from the CD on the iBook, even though it's showing up on the PB? The iBook's HD is clearly in code red, and even though I have a decent back up, there are a few things from the last two days or so I'd like to recover if possible.
Any thoughts on this? Many many thanks!
DK

Hi Hester,
Welcome to the Discussions.
To boot from the CD you can also hold down the Option key when you startup. That will bring up the Startup Manager allowing you to choose from any available boot volume.
Bill's suggestion will also work with a third party app such as Carbon Copy Cloner. With it you can clone the old drive to the new. Just boot from thee old external and select the "Make a bootable copy" option.
John

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