Adventures in macintosh land

Ok, so I got a PowerMac 1.8 G5 with 2 Giggle Bits of RAM (spelled wrong intentionally) that did not have a hard drive. (It was destroyed for security reasons.) I am trying to get anything possible installed on this and am getting exceedingly frustrated. I do not own other MAC's and only got this one to try to learn the system since I primarily do PC support but everyone seems to think I know Macintosh.

So far I have found this system to be excessively difficult to do anything with. I have:

Reset the PRAM using the alt/windows/p/r keys

Tried linux and OS X 10.2 DVD's

Tried USB booting the system

Tried finding a way of building a HDD with the stuff to install anything on the system.

So far I have a paperweight and am getting annoyed. 20 years ago this would have been fun but I'm too busy with yes dear projects to have the time to spend an entire weekend trying to get the silly thing running. I don't want to spend money on it until I'm sure it works.

Suggestions?