Well....partial success.

Tore it down totally.

Rebuild it to the last few steps of placing metal shield then bottom case plastics on.

Powers on, boots up, recognized DVD/CD-RW drive.

Install OS 9.2.1 onto the newer 5400RPM 40GB HD. I figured since I was opening her up anyway I might as well do something about the stock 4200RPM drive it shipped with.

So after install is complete, I reboot off the HD. All appears to be good.

Install metal shield.

No power.

Grr.

Stepping out to have a smoke and cool down a bit before I do something rash.

I did notice that installed the wrong USB port cover as detailed :

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1431

See the USB port cover has a little button for the PMU reset? The one I installed does not.

Guess I get to swap that out too.

Okay, smoking now. be right back.