IMac G4/800 in FireWire Target Disk Mode shuts down, hard drive hopeless?

I have found myself in possession of a 12 year-old iMac G4/800. The machine looks stock and was nice and full of dust when I took it apart, so I'm going to assume nothing has been upgraded on it. The person who the computer belongs to has had issues booting the machine and when it does boot, the machine will throw up the "grey screen of death" after a few seconds, I suspect when the hard drive starts to get hit.
I've attempted to start the machine in FireWire Target Disk Mode and the machine will mount on my 2011 MacBook Pro, however once I begin to copy files the machine will abruptly shut off.
I have also attempted to remove the hard drive from the machine and connect it to my MacBook Pro via an OWC Drive Adapter, but it won't mount from the adapter in Disk Utility, Terminal or Disk Warrior. I've connected other (non-IDE) drives with the adapter before, but no luck with this one. Perhaps the IDE connector is faulty on the adapter?
I may look for another drive adapter and I've made an Apple Genius app't for later this afternoon, but I'm curious if anyone has any further advice. Is it more likely that it's a motherboard issue that's causing the machine to shut of in FTDM or a hard drive issue? In any case, this may be one for the Data Rescue Experts. I imagine I may get a few looks at the Apple store with such an old machine.

Another contributory issue to booting in an older PPC Mac is the PRAM battery.
If the battery is more than four years old, it would likely be a partial cause of odd
startup issues and some settings that are required for the computer to start &
run correctly would not be available. The battery is a 3.6V. 1/2AA Lithium cell.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/BAA36VPRAM/
A few companies such as macsales.com show them on their web site... sounds
like your old iMac G4 800MHz could use one. Note there are takeapart instruction
pages online such as one from XLR8Yourmac from years ago. The 800MHz is
similar to the later models with faster G4 processors of the same appearance.
The hard drive type utilized is the older ATA/IDE or PATA; uses older formatting.
Tools, thermal paste, and some other tedious details need to be attended to...
•iMac G4 Take-apart for Drive and RAM upgrades:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/imac_g4/imacg4_takeapart.html
And another fairly good page w/ larger images:
•Mr Totes' iMac G4 -- taken apart:
http://www.mrtotes.co.uk/page1/page1.html
Sometimes the power supplies and other components can be the cause of issues
in these iMac G4 models, you can test the power output by using the test ports
that are located in the same compartment as the upgrade RAM slot & wi-fi card.
You may be able to find a copy of an original Apple service manual for that iMac.
Those are harder to get, and used to be available to Apple trained technicians.
Good luck & happy computing!

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