reset admin/firmware passwords

I'm an IT person at a school, and a teacher has asked me to unlock password protection on a emac that her son enabled, who has now forgotten the passwords.

I can get to a user desktop account that has no password, but the admin account does. He also enabled firmware protection.

I've read that if I remove/add some RAM and reset the PRam by booting to cmd-option-p-r I can remove firmware protection. However, when I try this it just boots normally to the graphic login screen. I am using an apple keyboard. Why is this command not working?

I don't currently have the startup disks, but could get them. From what I understand, if firmware protection is enabled I can't use the startup disks anyway to change the admin password.

All I'm really trying to do here is get in as admin for this teacher so she can have admin authority over the computer. How do I solve this? Thanks for any help.

I've read that if I remove/add some RAM and reset the PRam by booting to cmd-option-p-r I can remove firmware protection. However, when I try this it just boots normally to the graphic login screen. I am using an apple keyboard. Why is this command not working?

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This is not a given. It works on some of the Intel notebook machines and iMacs. However, I have not heard of anyone getting it to work on a PPC eMac. Not to say it hasn't been done.
Regards.

And do not bother with the install discs as that is something else firmware password protection disables. You may well find without that password it will beat you, as this is what it was designed to do, p[reventing theft.