IBook G4 won't start up from DVD

Greetings everyone,
Thanks in advance for any help that you are able to provide. My problem is as follows:
Last week I was working on my iBook when out of nowhere the screen started flashing between black and the screen. At this point the computer froze and there was nothing I could do to get out of it. There were no new programs installed and no new ram or other hardware onboard. I had to do a hard restart to get out of this.
After the hard restart my mac wouldn't start all the way back up. Upon start up it would chime, go to the grey apple screen, the gear thing would turn and then it would go to a blue screen and sit.
Sometimes if it sits long enough at this point the screen will begin to flash between all green, pink, grey, blue and black, but nothing becomes of this.
I have done the following:
1. multiple hard restarts with the same results
2. held down "shift" while starting with the same results
3. ran the diagnostics cd. I was able to boot from this cd
by holding down the "c" key. I ran the express and exten-
ded tests and nothing came back as a hardware issue.
4. booted into single user mode.
a. attempted to "re-boot" from inside SUM
b. attempted to remound the hdd
no results with either attempt
5. held down "control" "option" "shift" "delete" upon start
up and was told that I have a "kernel panic"
6. unplugged the power and battery and attempted to restart
with the same above results.
7. reset the pr-ram
8. reset the power management chip
At this point I decided to reinstall the whole system as I have everything backed up on my external hdd. I purchased the computer second hand (no problems in the 2 years of ownership) so it had 10.3 dvd's but came loaded with 10.4
By holding down "c" with the 10.3 dvd's in the drive it would not boot.
I went to the Apple Store today and told the dude at the genious bar all of the above. He stated that I needed a "raw version" of 10.4 to launch from. He said that holding down the "c" key with the new dvd in the drive would work. I purchased the 130.00 program, came home, attempted the start up/install and have had the exact same results as above.
Any thoughts? If I send it in to Apple to have it fixed the guy at the apple store figured I was looking at around 300 bucks. quite honestly I'm not willing to afford that price when I'm actually looking to upgrade my machine later this year. Maybe it will have to come to that, but I hope not.
Thanks again,
Rob
iBook G4 1.0 Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.8) Apple installed 512 RAM

I took my iBook to the Apple Store and found out there was a recall of some type on it. They took it back and replaced way more parts than they needed to, buffed out the case, new keyboard, new RAM (wasn't even Apple RAM), new HDD, new cable that went to the screen, new super drive, new track pad. Got it back and everything worked great. Thanks Apple!

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Your very welcome.
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http://macintoshhowto.com/hardware/how-do-i-get-my-broken-g4-ibook-fixed.html
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http://www.amazon.com/SANOXY-External-Enclosure-Case-Laptop/dp/B000FNBYKW/ref=sr _1_sc_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1338742155&sr=8-13-spell
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