Installing Leopard onto a laptop with a broken internal DVD drive?

I'm trying to install Leopard onto my PowerBook G4 (yes, long past the warranty but she's an old workhorse). The internal DVD "super" drive has been broken for a couple of years, so I've got a nice, fast, solid Sony external USB 2.0 DVD/CD player/burner.
Just now I inserted the install disk into the drive. The disk mounted. Install window popped up automatically. Clicked the button to restart and install... the Mac restarts alright, but there's no installation happening (and no error message to tell me what's happening).
I've been searching the documentation and this forum and so far I'm stumped. Can anyone shed any light on this?
Is it simply impossible to install Leopard from an external USB drive? If so, is there a non-disk method anyone can suggest?

Please post the specs on your g4, lets make sure its possible first, then someone here can help get you going.
And to add to that, I am thinking that it would have to be a firewire disk drive to boot (?? Anyone?)
I also have to agree with Jeff, If you have another mac with a working dvd drive, or know someone (use beer as payment ) with a mac that would be quick and easy. If you do it as jeff suggests, then both macs need to be the same, or if they are different, you can put the disk in the borrowed mac, shut it down and restart holding the T key, putting borrowed mac into target mode, then hook you mac and borrowed mac together with a firewire cable, start your mac holding the alt/option key which will bring you to the disk selection screen, pick the Leopard disk and it should start the installation.
Make sure when you get to the point in the installer where it asks you which disk you want to install to, make sure you select your mac (as the borrowed mac's hdd will show up also)
The above method basically turns the borrowed mac into an external firewire DVD drive. K
Message was edited by: eschw95458

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