Boot Options won't work

We have a Power Mac G5 in the office. None of the boot options seem to work. I can't zap the pram, can't boot into safe mode, can't boot to a cd, can't boot into target mode. None of the keyboard commands work during boot up. The keyboard and short cuts work perfectly during normal operation though.

I've run tech tool, and disk utility and neither can find anything wrong.

Any thoughts?

try another disk perhaps

Are you using an Apple keyboard or a 3rd party keyboard? Is it a wireless keyboard?

Thanks for the thoughts. There is a 3rd party keyboard usually on the mac. I had the same thought and put an apple keyboard on and reset the defaults for the keyboard. Same problem though.

Any other thoughts?

When you boot the computer normally and insert the DVD, go to the System Prefs and set the DVD as the Boot Disc from there. See what happens.

Not sure why the keyboard commands don't work for target disc mode though, that IS odd.

ok, so I put in the leopard install, set the start up disc to the install disc. The computer booted to the disc.

So then I selected the computer to boot up as a target drive (didn't know I could do that here) The computer came up as a target drive but within seconds shut down on it's own. Tried it again, same thing.

So I unplugged all Firewire drives and cables, tried it again. same thing.

This is starting to sound like a hardware problem, but I'm not sure where.

Does the machine have any 3rd party cards in it that it didn't ship from Apple with? Did you try all the Firewire ports?

no, no third party cards at all. The firewire ports all work great when I use them with g-raid drives.

I'm thinking about doing an archive and clean install. Just didn't want to have to do that!