Installing Tiger with external DVD drive, why won't it work??

I have been trying to install OS X 10.4.3 from the DVD disk, last time I upgrade the OS I had to go out and buy an external DVD drive because I only have a cd drive in my mac. This worked fine last time but now I'm upgrading again it just won't work.
I can not get the mac to boot from the DVD, it sees it's there, I've tried holding down c, the alt key, the option key, choosing the DVD as the start up disk and checking the firmware, nothing will work!
I have read other questions of the same nature but I don't seem to have found an answer.
Can anyone help me, please??
Ruth
imac Power PC G3   Mac OS X (10.3.9)  

I'm having the same problem. My mom has a Quicksilver G4 – four years old, but plenty to run Tiger. The only thing is we didn't get the built in DVD player. We got an external firewire DVD but can't get the machine to boot from the disk in the external drive.
If I try to run the installer I get a (-2) error that Startup Disk can't make the selected drive the boot drive. If I go into Startup I can select the DVD, but upon actual start up it can't find it and I eventually get the folder with the question mark. Holding down option doesn't bring it up in the list and holding down c does absolutely nothing.
Anybody else?

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