it appears to boot but has no video, just a grey screen. I did manage to get it started through os 9 and tried to install 8.6 from the image, but the installer complained half way about missing iMac resources. Maybe the 2.3.1 rom has special enablers for os 8.6 that the os 9 system file have by default.
anyhow, the cd works without problem on my G4 mac, so i know it is not the cd at least.
It's not important that i have 8.6, i just want too because i can so i will try and hack it to work.
i also have a later iMac 2002 edition (PowerMac4,1), which i plan on making it work on too.
Thanks for all your help anyway.