Boot from Disk without an optical drive

One of my clients brought me a 12" PowerBook G4 with booting issues. Through much troubleshooting I've determined that it needs an Archive & Install.
The problem is that optical drive is not functioning. (The client reports that the laptop was dropped at some point in the recent past & I suspect something is tweaked inside the drive. In any case it will not accept a disk.)
I am looking for a way to get the OS Archived & Installed without waiting until the optical drive is repaired. I do not have an external CD/DVD drive.
I have tried booting my G4 iMac from the install disk with the PowerBook attached in target mode, but that has failed.
I have tried putting the iMac in target mode with the disk in the drive and booting the PowerBook with the Option key. It did not show the Disk as a valid volume.
Any thoughts? or are we stuck until the dag-nabbed drive is fixed?
Thanks,
PT
PS: I have backed up the user data, at least...... <Grin>

Never mind.....
(in my best Emily Litella voice)
I managed to borrow an external Optical drive and am currently booted from the install disk.
Thanks anyway!
-PT

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Hi,
A while ago I partitioned my hard drive and installed Windows 7. I use it for gaming and eventually decided I would swap my superdrive out for a SSD so Windows could run on it’s own drive.
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Message was edited by: lauber1322
Message was edited by: lauber1322

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Boot from Disk without an optical drive

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