i've been building a g4/sawtooth 450 AGP for a while with parts i've amassed mostly from ebay and when i had it all together i turned it on to see it automatically boot to open firmware even when auto-boot isn't even set to where it is supposed to do that. i've barely worked with open firmware on my ibook so i'm not familiar with it completely but i know the basics. i've put in the machine several cd drives as i have no standard apple ide ones, just old scsi's from my old 7300/200 and 9600/180's. i've set each one to be a master drive since i have my seagate drive on the ata ultra ribbon and a few of them respond when i try things like eject ide0 and other's just freeze and later give me messages, usually annoying default catch! stuff. i figured out some more stuff to do with open firmware and eventually using a cd drive that responded to eject ide0 and later eject cd when i figured out nvalias and that stuff, i tried the command boot cd:,\\:tbxi to boot off of an os x cd and also a couple different os 9 ones. after i tired this it gave me a lengthier error message than usual unlike just typing in boot cd.
this is transcript after it spun the cd and appeared to read it: this is on a mitsumi cdrw 8X4X24 or something and it also did this with a slightly newer lite-on cdrw and i think one more.

0> boot cd:,\\:tbxi loadsize=258b2 adler32=878490d1

parsing <CHRP-BOOT>

evaluating <BOOT-SCRIPT>
method <dimensions> not found; ihandle=ff9c4b80 phandle-ff8a90f0
Default Catch! , code=fffffff6 at %SRR0; f80c030 %SRR1:0000b030

ok

the prompt's backdrop would turn from white to blue after reading the discs

i have no idea what's wrong, i've tried all the resetting pvram and holding the button by the battery for 30 seconds stuff. it could just be the cd-drive itself but i'm pretty sure they're compatible enough if they manage to respond to the eject command and also the boot command although in not the exact way i want them to. if anyone thinks is might be the cd drive i'd like to know if there is a cheap pc drive i could find that would be bootable as i've already put a lot into this little project already, haha.