help! Dead ibook (700MHz - CDROM)

[Brian Hugh Warren]

Hi - I'm a newbie.

We just got an ibook - 700MHz/CDROM

My wife just installed some more RAM today. She describes the activity 
as painless, and as she started it up it went ok till it looked all 
started up, and she double clicked on the hard drive icon and it went 
"blip" and shut off. Now, I'm thinking, ok, bad ram, so I take out the 
RAM. Start it up, nothing but a grey screen. Hmm..... i try a restart - 
I get a grey apple and nothing more. I try a restart from the iBook 
software install CD, target disk mode, nothing in the optical drive, 
etc. - nothing but a grey screen. I try a variety of monkeying around, 
and get pretty much nothing. A couple times it actually made it to the 
desktop but as i try more, i get mostly nothing.

Any idea? What am I missing?
  much gratitude if you can help...

brian