Pismo wont boot from CD

[krabat]

Pismo 400 MHz
40 gig HD
Teac DW-224E-A (DVD/CD-RW 24/48/8)
OS X.2.6

Before going travelling (work-related) for a couple of months, I bought my pismo to have access to camera, iPod and telephone-recharge - CD-drive didn't work, so I replaced it with this beauty of a Teac-burner.

Was very busy before leaving, so I took the easy way, while I waited for the replacement drive, and installed a new OS on another powerbook, and swopped the HD's.

On my tour minor problems occurred, and I discovered my home-burned copy of my OS X CD didn't work. Shite, I thought - 'been sloppy at the burner... But returning home 3 days ago the machine still won't boot from any original or copied boot-CD.

I have zapped the P-RAM. Norton reports serious problems, but can't fix the system-partition; mounting the pismo as firewire drives on another mac doesn't help, as Norton or any other repair-utility cannot un-mount a firewire drive. System disk is severely fragmented, but can't be de-fragged for the same reasons.

Possible related problem?: Cannot boot into OS 9.2.2 - doesn't show up in the Startdisk panel (main partition within the specified 8 Gigs)

QUESTION: Could the problem be related to hardwear ;-) or could it be software? IF hardware, how to make sure? And what to do?

Boot ROM 2.4f1
ROM#113-XXXXX-114 rev. 2

Anybody with similar problems?

greetings, and thanks,
kenneth

PS: The Pismo is my office, and I really am in need of a solution, as I go into retreat in a week and the rest of the year (to write).

[Zammy-Sam]

does it list your CD when you boot and hold the option-key? (Make sure the original OSX CD is inserted in the drive)
I know, a very trivial thing, but maybe you missed this?!

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Are you sure that the Teac drive is a bootable drive in the Pismo? Have you ever booted from the Teac drive? It could be that the drive itself simply will not boot a CD in your computer.