Xserve G4 Won't boot from Anything

Question

Everyone:
I have a G4 Xserve (slot load) with 2 GB of RAM installed. It was running X.3.9 just as happy as a lark. I migrated all users from the server to use it as a test environment. My first test was to upgrade it to Tiger, which so far has not gone very smoothly.
The Xserve has all 4 bays populated. Bays 1&2 are mirrored using Apple's RAID software, this is the system drive. Bays 3&4 are set as a RAID 0.
My Upgrade goes like this: I inserted the Tiger Server CD (no DVD drive), double-clicked the installer and the server rebooted. The installed seemed to go smooth, but I did have to walk away from it towards the end. When I came back, the server was stuck at a blue screen and a moveable mouse pointer. Couldn't do anything else.
This forced a hard reset, of which the same thing happened. So I thought, no big deal, let's just redo the installation. Insert Tiger CD again, hold down C key....server boots from hard drive and gets stuck.
Weird.
Ok, let's try booting from the Panther CD. Reboot server, hold down mouse button, eject Tiger CD, insert Panther CD, reboot, hold C key....server boots from hard drive and gets stuck.
Dang. This was supposed to be an easy upgrade.
Just so things aren't confused, I pull out the drives with the Raid 0 (Bays 3 & 4). Same process.
OK, maybe it's the Raid on the system drive, so I pull out one of the drives. Same boot process.
Reset the PRAM, just for grins, no change.
Alright, let's see if I can force it to recognize the CD, pull out all the drives and put in a spare, brand new drive from the shelf.
Same thing, won't boot from CD. Neither Panther or Tiger. At least I get the blinking icon that there's no OS installed.
Put the #1 system drive back in, connect an external firewire CD Drive, still won't boot from CD. I still get to a blank blue screen, though.
Try booting in Single User Mode, I still get the same thing, boots from disk to blue screen.
Now I've spent an afternoon of my time and another techs time and we're both scratching our heads. I recalled that I could also issue boot commands via the Sys ID button. Dig out manual, find the combination, same story. Boots from hard drive to the blue screen and stops.
Seems like any input at boot time is being ignored, although it will eject the CD if the mouse is held down. I've verified that the machine is not locked (the light is off). I also opened it up to make sure that the lock switch wasn't partially stuck. Not sure if there's anything else to check.
Thoughts?

Answer 1

does that mean I have to send it to Apple to fix
No. Apple changes the bootROMs from model to model so you can't use the same install disc on different models. It could their way of dealing with piracy.
Example; Say I bought a new MacBook Pro and I had an iMac that was still running Leopard. I couldn't use the Snow Leopard install disc from the new MBP to install SL on the iMac.
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