No start up menu via option key

Greetings,
I'm trying to start up from an external drive but when I hold down the option key at start up, instead of getting a menu from which to chose the start up disk, I get three buttons I've never seen before. To the left is a circular arrow, in the center (slightly elevated) is a small square with a disk icon with the title of my disk underneath, then to the right is a button with an arrow pointed to the right of the screen. I'm only allowed to select the right arrow and then the computer starts up from my drive. Does anybody know what these icons are and why upon start up I'm not given the option to start from my external drive?

The arrow to the left refreshes the display of disks; the disks themselves are displayed in the center. Pushing the right arrow continues the startup process. The Startup Manager isn't seeing the system on the external drive because it isn't finding an usable system on it; there are many reasons why. Some of these are:
1. It is an USB disk with Mac OS X installed. Mac OS X usually doesn't support the use of USB disks to boot the computer on PowerPC Macs; the only known exception is with the Tiger install DVD on a clamshell iBook.
2. Your computer is an Aluminum PowerBook and Mac OS 9 is installed on the drive. Aluminum PowerBooks aren't capable of starting up from Mac OS 9.
3. The system version on the drive is too old to start up your machine. Knowing exactly which computer you have is necessary to determine the minimum requirements for it.
4. The system folder isn't blessed. In order to bless the folder properly, you will need to say whether the drive has Mac OS 9 or X installed on it. Some versions of Mac OS X will be seen by the Startup Manager even if they aren't blessed in the Finder.
5. You tried to drag-copy a Mac OS X installation to the disk. This method causes invisible items and permissions to be lost; reinstalling Mac OS X is necessary in this case.
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