Unpartition+reinstall without cd or cd drive, just external firewire hd

1) i have been given an iMac g4 with non-working cd drive, 10.4.11 Tiger, 700mhz which had its hd partitioned into 2 equal parts. i do not have an installation cd as was a give-away from a friend of a friend. i cloned/backed up the whole of part 1 to part 2 using superduper, then moved those backups to the external hd. superduper said it was going to erase everything on that drive if i used it to clone/backup directly to it, so i thought i'd try moving the disc backups over. i want to un-partition the iMac drive without losing all the what is on the computer. (toast, photoshop, protools, dreamweaver, and some other stuff that's purchased that i don't have installation discs for.) trying to figure out is there a way to download the Tiger startup installation files to my external and somehow boot from there to unpartition and install, instead of from an installation cd? i need help.
2) then i want to figure out how to network the two, using a netgear router that i can't install from cd since the iMac's cd drive is broken.
3) i'm not a mac native, so i don't know how to do anything.
any help? i've tried since sunday to figure this out on my own.

Hi, & welcome to the forums!
1. Good that you have it backed up, but did you Clone it to the external drive? Is the external drive Firewire?
2. You can network them, but Target mode would be how to install using the other's Optical drive...
FW Target Made
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583
I'd call Apple with the Serial number of the Mac and get the Install Discs for that machine, or find where to buy them.
3. Welcome aboard.

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Raj wrote:
That is not the reason it didn't work. Here is the actual clarity:
*A retail Leopard DVD should be able to boot a new Macbook Pro unibody.*
So you are saying even if the driver for the controller on which the DVD drive sits is not available in the Leopard DVD you are using because the hardware was not manufactured at the time the Leopard release on the DVD was made, the OS should magically just boot? How is that possible? Unibody MacBook Pros have entirely NEW AHCI chipset - for which there won't be any drivers on the older Leopard DVD and as such the DVD wont be detected once the OS on the DVD loads. In cases where the chipset used is same (as in previous generations of MBP) it will boot.
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On my way home, I stopped at a Mac store and asked them to test this. They successfully booted a new Macbook Pro unibody from an older Leopard DVD. And this is why Apple is replacing my computer, because it is a hardware issue, not a software one.
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Unpartition+reinstall without cd or cd drive, just external firewire hd

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