Target disk mode opticle drive?

My ibook g3 cd drive is broken and my external drive is having problems booting from install discs. The iMac boots them fine. I have an iBook g4 that will do this but its dads laptop. I need to install mac os x 10.1 (which will not mount external drives on installation) on the iBook g3 (there is somthing wrong with the mother board, it runs tiger worse than the iMac which has less ram.)
my point is is how can I use the iMac g3 opticle drive on the ibook g3 with target disk mode?

I don't think you can do it that way, if you are using the iMac in target mode. According to this document
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661
"FireWire Target Disk Mode works on internal ATA drives only. Target Disk Mode only connects to the master ATA drive on the Ultra ATA bus..."
On the slot-loader iMac G3, the optical drive is the slave drive on the ATA bus. The hard drive is obviously master. So only the internal hard drive can be seen by the host computer.
You may be able to do it as follows. Start the iBook in FireWire Target Disk Mode. Connect it do the iMac running normally. The iBook's hard drive should show up on the iMac's desktop as an external FireWire drive. If so, insert the Mac OS X 10.1 installation disc. Restart with the C key held down to start up from the iMac's optical drive. Run the installation using the iMac and target the iBook's hard drive for the installation. Once installation completes, and after the initial restart, shut down both computers and try to restart the iBook normally, from the new 10.1 installation.

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