Replacement hard drive not recognized in mac mini

Hi folks,
I have an issue similar to several threads that were active during 2007 and 2008, but the information and answers given then do not solve my problem.
The original 80 GB Hitachi drive in a 1.5 Mhz PPC failed. I replaced it with a Western Digital PATA 320 GB ide drive and reassembled the Mac Mini.
The original Apple OS X was put in the optical drive and the computer was started with the "c" button pressed when powered on, but repeatedly the disk was ejected after a short time. Since the mac mini does not boot from the proper install cd, I cannot use disk utilities to partition and format the WD drive per the other thread messages.
The WD drive is not formatted for Apple yet. I connected the headless mac mini to an older ibook with a firewire cord and I attempted to boot the mac mini in target disk mode. The ibook never mounted the mac mini as an external drive, an icon did not appear on the desktop, and running disk utilities on the ibook did not recognize the mac mini connected by firewire as a mounted drive. I mounted an Acom hard drive connected by fire wire as a test of the ports and wires and that device was recognized in disk utilities and an icon for it was seen on the desktop.
Back to the issue at hand. What else can I do to partition and format a new hard drive installed in an older mac mini where 1) the install disk is kicked out of the optical drive and 2) the unformatted drive cannot be accessed via target disk mode from an ibook?
Is 320 GB incompatible with a PPC mac Mini?
Thanks in advance for offers of help and correct answers.
Mich

Hi Mich,
the older PPC computers are usualy limited to 128Gb max. HD size.
You need something like this:
"MacOS X 10.4.x and Earlier Hi-Cap Installer.app"
Its available for $25 here:
http://www.intechusa.com/

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