Ok so I get to answer. In case anyone is interested, the main issue all along (except for the first HDD in June) was the
Logic board. I had thought maybe the hard drive cable was the culprit, and Dan (I think) said the 7200 sata 3 hard drive was too “fast” for this old crate. The SDD ''el cheapo'' I got off Amazon (inland professional) 240GB for 29.99 is working quite well so far and has breathed new life into this old thing.
I bought the used logic board from powerbook medic (powerbookmedic.com) these folks were very helpful. It shipped and was received in 4 days. I loaded the OS from the disk I thought might be bad (but was’nt) on pretty much the first try.
There is a lot of research gone into this final repair, and I implore anyone contemplating doing this sort of thing, to do the research as there were many different ways to get into trouble or get the wrong part. I thank everyone here for the help to get it going in the right direction.
In closing, it is still an old computer that is not supported by apple and I can’t go to every website because of the lack of security support, Firefox is even not supporting Lion any longer. It works for me and for whatever reason I like it.
Walt