Getting really sick trying to install tiger

Hi all, as my first post to this forum, I come here for help.

I'm an average pc user, but I have always loved mac. So, three weeks ago I bought an iBook SE Dark blue(366Mhz, firewire, 320mb of ram, 10gb hd and a 24x drive) trough eBay.

The laptop came with MacOS X 10.2 Installed, and a copy of Macos 8. When it arrived, I disassembled it and changed the hard disk (10Gb simply weren't enough), and replaced the CD drive with a combo drive (DVD read and CD write).

Then I installed MacOS X 10.3 Panther. Everything worked well, until the oddysey started. I tried then installing mac os tiger (10.4). The CD won't start booting, it would just go to the desktop as normal (of course I had already selected to boot from CD, and tried also booting with the C key pressed).
I then entered again the 10.3 install CD and did the same thing. He wouldn't let me. Then I thought that maybe if it had an operating system working it wouldn't let me install anything else. So, what did I do? Erase the whole drive. Okay, now the iBook is brand new and should boot whatever I tell him to boot.
I tried the following CDs:
MacOS 8 -- It says it doesn't find anything to boot
MacOS 9 -- The same, the computer with the question mark
MacOS 10.3 -- Boots at first try, always, it's the only thing he want's to boot
MacOS 10.4 Install CD -- Computer with question mark
MacOS 10.4 Install DVD -- the same.

I ressetted the nvram. Well not only that, i told him to init-nvram, to set-defaults, to setenv boot-device="cd", and lots of other tries on OpenFirmware. I tried from the bootloader (that wich appears when holding alt key while hearing the chime), and from all 5CDs the only thing wich appears as "bootable" is the 10.3 install CD.

OpenFirmware is old (v3.3) and I thought Tiger wouldn't let me install it because of that, but as I can't even get to install MacOS 9, I cannot update firmware (installers forces me to use macos 9.1)

Oh, if I try to install tiger from Desktop, he doesn't say anything about incompatibilities or anything else, everything is just fine. Then I tell him to reboot (for start installing) and boots to desktop again, no matter what I do.

I just don't understand this d**** thing, any help would be welcome... as I'm getting really mad with it. I just want to have my software updated, but it doesn't let me, neither upgrade or downgrade. It just wants panther. and I don't want panther!

im not sure if tiger is compatible with ur ibook. it may be but if someone else you tell us if it is or not then it would help.
thanks chris

I don't think you can install Tiger on a 7 year-old machine like christm posted.

Tiger has very high demands on hardware and your iBook just doesn't have the hardware to follow. And I would doubt a firmware update would fix that either. Sticking with Panther might be your only choice.

As far as I know, it meets the minimal requirements, it's not the first generation iBook, it's the special edition (wich came in dark blue with firewire and a faster cpu), and, when I start installation from the desktop, it don't say it cannot be installed in this computer (just like toaster 7 said) For what I've seen, tiger and panther requirements are almost the same, and I don't have any extra hardware wich could cause it to fail either, but it don't say anything else. It doesn't get stucked or anything, the DVD drive reads the disk, then the ibook reads just a little bit from the CD, and that's it, it makes nothing else more, it just stays there, waiting for you to insert (another) bootable CD (without rebooting, put the panther cd in, it boots, put anyother thing, it doesn't).

Eitherway, even if tiger was incompatible with my system, why the **** shouldn't it boot from macos 8 and 9 install cds, but yes from Panther? I can't understand that, cause it makes almost the same thing that tiger do when you put the cd on the tray, the dvd reads the toc, then it acess the dvd for a while, and then it stays there, waiting for you, to put panther in. And at least I would want to have Macos 9 and panther installed (i just want to learn from macs, and until now, the last macos I had used was version 7.5, so I have a lot to learn until I get to macos x)

PS: If someone is thinkin' I don't have mac os 9 drivers installed on hd or something, I do have them, I tried reinstalling without a partition table, with a fat32 partition (then to be erased to put hfs), with hfs+ (or something like that), and with two different optical drives (the one that came with the iBook and my combo removed from a laptop pc). I tried, also, with the stock hard disk (toshiba 10gb) and with the one I'm trying on (fujitsu 60gb), but that shouldn't make any difference, since except for the processor, all other peripherals that can be replaced (sodimm, hd and combo) work both for mac and pc, so... I run out of possibilities... thanks for, at least, taking your time to read

and thanks for anyone who could help! I just don't know how to make it boot, anything else wich is not panther

I just saw this at Apple's website. So yes your iBook meets minimum requirements. But minimum requirements doesn't equal necessarily pleasure in using it. I imagine it'll be slow as frozen molasses. Even if you do meet minimum requirements some things just won't work with Tiger technology like for instance your video card won't support Core Image.

But what the heck this is your iBook. Another member might have a solution to your problem. Good luck.

Where did you get Tiger from? You're not using someone's iMac or Mac Mini DVD are you?

A friend let me a "legal" copy of tiger wich didn't work (on dvd), then I downloaded images of cd, wich also didn't work.

Also, I have now tried another thing, from a third optical drive connected through an usb/firewire hd adaptor. It still sees the Panther cd, but it doesn't see either mac os 9 or tiger.

I'm starting to think that this iBook is angry with me for disassembling it 4 times or something... grrrr...

@MacHeadCase

Yes, I suppose it will run slow, maybe it won't run at all or get hung, but I just want to try it, I don't even want to keep with it, neither with macos 9 (it's fast enough with panther), but I just want to try them, but this ****ed thing wouldn't let me, and I don't understand why, I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, if the iBook's having some kind of problem with the boot sectors, or are my three cd /dvd drives, or is the nvram wich still holds something it shouldn't keep (like when I found that even with a init-nvram and a reset-all it still wanted to boot the MacOSX kernel on hd...