Imac Opensuse 10.2 Something Missing?

i have just installed opensuse 10.2 on an imac slot-loading G3. The installation completed with apparent success but after rebooting at the end, it just came up with the flashing question mark icon that signifies no operating system being found on macs.
I have previously installed openSuse 10.2 sucessfully on the same imac from the same discs - the only difference is that since then i had removed and formatted the imac's hard-drive on a windows pc before the installation. I'm guessing that this was where something went wrong! All i did was to delete all the partitions from another previous failed linux installation, so that the entire drive was showing up as "unallocated space".
Perhaps i have inadvertantly removed some miniscule yet essential bit of data on the hard drive in the process?!
What should i do?
Thanks very much!