OK, getting somewhere;
error: error while trying to load or boot
Could it be my aging CDROM?
Perhaps. Then again, perhaps it's something else.
At the firmware prompt, type show-devs and press enter. If it scrolls by too fast (and it probably will) then press space shortly after pressing enter. What you're looking for is an entry that has cd@x,y. It should be right near the entry for your harddrive. If you see one, use what you see to boot. For example, you might need to type:
boot /pci/cd@1,0 boot.img to get it to boot. If that fails, make sure it's connected. :-) If all else fails, yeah, the drive is probably too old.
Good luck.
