Well i've abandoned the reinstall idea for the time being. I put the ol' 40 gigger in and tried it, and lo and behold it booted straight into Jaguar without a hitch. In fact the iMac is working just great now, and as a matter of fact, i'm actually typing this very post from said iMac, running Firefox 2 on 10.2.8. Oh well, thanks for your help everyone.

Btw, equill, if you're still curious, i looked over the SODIMMs today, they're all 8 chip SODIMMs.
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The Infamous LCGuy - Now back with Amazing Working iMac Action™!