Opening iTunes 10 Library on an External Hard Drive from iTunes 9.2.1

Hi All,
I backed up my iTunes library on an external Hard Drive using;
'Machine A'- Powerbook, PowerPC, 1.25 GHz
OS - Leopard
iTunes - 10.1
This Aluminum G4 is undergoing repairs so I am now using an older Powerbook which works fine.
Configuration on this is
'Machine B'- Powerbook, PowerPC, 400 GHz
OS - Tiger / 10.4.11
iTunes - 9.2.1
My question is,
'Is there any way for me to run iTunes 9.2.1 using the 'Music Library' from the external Hard Drive'
and not loose any metadata (all the Tags/Ratings/Comments/Art Work)
that I have painstakingly undertaken for the last 8 to 9 years.
Tried opening iTunes with the <option> key & pointing to the library but got the error:
"The file iTunes Library cannot be read because it was created by a newer version of iTunes"
It is likely that I will be using Machine B for a few months,
so I really hope you experts out there can help me with a nice and easy solution.
Cheers,
Matt.

The iTunes application should be installed on the system drive. You may need to repair iTunes to fix that error regarding a missing .exe.
To organize your library properly see Make a split library portable.
If you don't have a working version of the library that can be transformed into a portable shape I have tools and techniques that can repair the broken links.
tt2

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