Errors installing Leopard on iBook G4 (Late 2004)

I apologize for the long post but it seems like a good idea to provided some good background:
My friends iBook started freaking out a couple of months ago (e.g. kernel errors and all the fonts on the desktop icons/menu were "AAAAAAAA"). I helped him run Disk Utilities. I installed and ran Applejack and this "seemed" to help, but the drive still had errors that neither could repair. Last week, it started to persistently crashing and producing kernel errors. I took his iBook home to see if I could help. It stopped booting and Disk Utility could not repair the errors, so I wiped the drive and repartitioned and the drive still had several errors. I assumed that the drive was bad.
I replace the HD and installed a 250 GB, WD Scorpio Blue PATA, Model WD2500BEVERTL. Oh, the iBook is a G4, 1.33GHZ and 256 MB Main Ram plus 512 MB of RAM added. I followed the instructions from iFixIt <http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/iBook-G4-14-Inch-933-MHz-1-33-GHz-Hard-Driv e-Replacement/189/1> and faqintosh <http://www.faqintosh.com/risorse/en/guides/hw/ibook/g4hd/>. Both sites were almost correct. After I removed and replaced the HD, put everything together I had to remove the firmware password, which required a couple of RAM removals and Command-Option-P-R resets. I performed a few commands from terminal to verify that the firmware password was gone. See <http://www.fif3.com/howto/archives/001983.html>.
I installed the Leopard disk, setup the new disk using the Disk Utilities on the Leopard disk and proceeded with this installation. It failed to install. I played around with this and that and made several attempt to perform the installation via the optical drive in the iBook. It did not work. I started to read the installation log and tried to figure out what the problem was and found a few errors and tried to find a solution online. I was suspicious that the optical drive was acting up <http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10470660&#10470660> , <http://www.hackint0sh.org/f147/68876.htm> so I investigated how to install Leopard using Target mode. Simple, right, connect the iMac to the iBook, restart the iMac in Target mode so the iBook can share the opticle drive in the iMac, unless.... Leopard cannot see a drive via Target mode if the "Target" is running Snow Leopard. grrrrr!
Well, I found lots of talk about imaging the Leopard installation disk to an external firewire HD, and performing the Leopard installing using the "option" start and select the external firewire drive. I found some great instruction <http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10329117-263.html> that walk me through the steps required to make an image of the Leopard disk and then restore the file to an external drive. An hour and a half later, I had the image restored to a 500 GB USB/Firewire external HD with one partition Apple Partition Map and connected it via the firewire to the ibook... Ran the installation again and the same errors occurred. I tried again, freeze. Tried again same errors.
Well, I had a crazy idea, install Leopard on the External Drive. This time the errors occurred at the same points; however, it was verbose and if I am reading it correctly the information that the installer is looking for on the Leopard disk that is missing or corrupt. The interesting thing with this is "Bad" Leopard disk came up several times during my searches. I have use my Leopard disk once on the iMac (now running Snow Leopard), why would I suspect the installation disk? Right? Well, the error that displayed on the last attempt pointed to the installation disk missing information and to contact the vendor.
Yesterday, I obtained another retail copy of Leopard from a coworker and the same errors occurred. I tried again, it froze. I tried a disk image to the external drive using the new disk which resulting in the same errors.
I don't really think there is a hardware issue (e.g. RAM) but who knows at this point. All I can really say is that my friends iBook is still dead. Actually, worse that when I got it. At least before it would boot Tiger... sometimes. Does anyone have any recommendations? Or a source for a retail copy of Tiger?

It is obvious the this is the wrong forum OR no one is interested in installing Leopard on an iBook G4. Regardless, I continued to investigate and found many posts related to bad or suspect RAM. So, I purchased a 512MB stick of Crucial RAM PC 2700 from a local PC and Apple repair shop. I would have purchased a 1GB stick, but this was not available.
I reset the RAM via Command-Option-P-R upon restart, ran the Leopard installation. This time it was successful. Everything was working great and then I had to install the updates... Note: I Should have made an image of the installation on the HD and Time Machine back up... but I didn't. This was a bad call because the 10.5.8 combo update didn't finish and crashed during install... then it provided an error message that it could not be installed, restart.
Subsequent attempts to reinstall Leopard via the DVD/CD drive have failed. I ran Disk Utility and the HD volume now had errors. I tried to repair these with Applejack & TechTool Deluxe. It could not repair... so I gave up.
Upon my returning to a challenge, I used Disk Utility to erase and setup one partition on the HD. I ran Leopard install. It failed. Ran Disk Utility again, erased the HD this time with zeros (just for fun) and the installation is hanging. I am going to let it sit over night. Any ideas out there?

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