Install OSx on external usb drive.

I have an iMac G5 isight that has unreliable internal hard drive connection. I've swapped out several hard drives that work fine in other computers, but there seems to be an issue with accessing it on this iMac.
So I would like to try and install OSx on an external usb drive. I have alreay found that I can boot from an external usb on this computer, the problem is it won't let me install OSx on to the usb drive when I boot from a disc.
The only other macs I have are Intel based which won't let me put a powerpc installation on to an external.
I'd rather not purchase a firewire external, and I'm not sure that I know of anyone with a working powerpc mac.
Any suggestions??

Use a product such as Carbon Copy Cloner to clone an already existing PowerPC or Universal installation to an external partitioned using the APM table map. The OS used must be at least as new as the iMac and not newer than 10.5.8.
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