PowerBook G4 on its last legs: sometimes restarts, sometimes not

I've got all my data off my old beloved Titanium and bought a new black MacBook. But now I'm trying to clear off the old Titanium and reinstall 10.2.4 just to see if I can get this old baby running again.
Here's all the backstory. The Titanium crashed and then wouldn't boot. It would spin the disk but the screen stayed black. I tried starting with SHIFT held down and sometimes it got part way into the boot up process. Eventually I managed to start it in Target Mode and connected it to a new Mac (my new black MacBook 120G) and I copied all the data off of the Powerbook that I wanted. While I had it slaved up I ran Disk Utility and Verified the Disk. It had no problems. But Verify Permissions was grayed out. Also while slaved I trashed the preferences - the ones under username/library/preferences including mail, recent items, custompresets, safari and finder .plists.
(The other problem is that this Powerbook has no working DVD drive. It died 6 months ago.)
I tried to install the new OS over the Firewire while in the Target mode but that didn't work. (I can explain if you want more detail.)
I've tried clearing the VPRAM. I haven't done the PMU yet.
What I want to know is: while in slave mode how can I delete some files that'll make a clean start up more likely. Which files should I delete to make a clean start up?
I wouldn't mind erasing the whole darn thing except I don't have a way to get an OS on there. (Unless I can figure out how to install via Target Mode while the Powerbook still hasn't booted up correctly.)
Thanks!

Hi, ds, and welcome to Apple Discussions.
I wouldn't mind erasing the whole darn thing except I don't have a way to get an OS on there. (Unless I can figure out how to install via Target Mode...)
I'd say this is the direction to go in. The likelihood that you can make your damaged OS installation work again by deleting things is small. Neither you nor we have any idea what's already missing or corrupt, and that's probably what's wrong. A new installation is far more likely to pay off quickly and be reliable.
So when you tried to reinstall the OS via FireWire Target Disk Mode, what went wrong? Please describe exactly what you did and exactly what happened. Better still, try it again, and tell us exactly what happens this time.

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