ibook G4 blue screen error

Hi all,

I have recently come into possession of an old 14" ibook G4 1.2Ghz that appears to be in a pretty bad way! The machine has the well documented "blue screen" error, which after a fair bit of diagnostic work, I believe is due to a faulty hard drive. The machine will cold boot to the OSX login screen 100% of the time after it has been left for several hours, but shortly after will freeze completely. It will then on EVERY subsequent attempt, begin loading OSX, the grey screen with the apple and loading logo will dissapear, and then it will display a blue background and freeze (I have left it for upwards of an hour, no change). This process is EXACTLY the same if you try to boot off the OSX DVD, it works first time and then freezes every other attempt.

I have tried everything I can think of, I have tried resetting the power regulation unit, I have booted from the OSX DVD and attempted a repair (freezes), verify permissions (freezes) and an erase and reinstall of OSX (freezes on 17% of checking disk process everytime). I have also tried booting in single user mode (which works flawlessly EVERY TIME) and running the fcrk hard drive check command. This has been run several times, and after initial errors, is reporting no problems.

I have now managed to get into the Disk Utility for the 100th time on a cold boot and have erased the disk, but it still will not install OSX.

I really want to know what my remaining options are? I have an old imac lying around, so would it be possible (after sourcing a firewire cable) to boot into the ibook in targetted mode and try a network install? Or should I just try installing a new hard drive? Does anyone know what specification these are? (I am assuming PATA 2.5")

Thanks

Hugh