Upgrading mac mini from tiger to leopard with broken DVD drive (long)

bonjour.
I have a macmini (1.42PPC) with a broken DVD drive running tiger on which i would like to install leopard (from scratch). I have a retail DVD of leopard, and a macbook. Other equipment includes a PSP and an 8Gb memory stick duo, usb cables, a 40Gb ipod with firewire cable. Wireless keyboard and mouse.
I've created a bootable image of my leopard DVD onto the 8Gb memory stick in the PSP using the macbook. I can plug the PSP into the macbook and the memory stick mounts as the leopard install DVD. I run InstallOSX and i'm prompted to reboot. Upon rebooting, my macbook boots from the memory stick in the PSP attached via USB and the language option menu of the install process appears. So far so good. I shutdown the macbook.
I then take my bootable image of my leopard DVD and plug it into the macmini. It automounts, i run InstallOSX and i'm prompted to reboot and the macmini restarts.
Unfortunately, the macmini reboots from it's internal HDD, and not the memory stick attached via USB so the installation fails.
Is there a way i can force the macmini to boot or reboot from the USB drive? I only have a wireless keyboard. Does the macmini in fact support booting from a USB device at all?
I don't know much about the firmware shipped with the macmini, and can not access it during startup to take a look as i have a wireless keyboard. Can i access the firmware from the booted macmini to change the boot device, like i can with a Sun Solaris box (eeprom)
Could there be another solution that wouldn't involve playing with the firmware?
I don't have the option of buying additional equipement.
Any thoughts on this problem would be welcome.
best wishes
jack
ps. I added (long) to topic subject, not to phish, but to save others' time, as it's quite a long and boring post

thanks for your advice, however this is all but impossible as i have a wireless keyboard which doesn't permit me boot into anything but the OS, as the keyboard and bluetooth drivers don't load early enough in the boot process.
however, i did find a firewire cable, so this is what i did:
booted the macmini in target mode and added a 10Gb partition to it from the macbook, onto which i restored the leopard DVD image
booted the mac mini normally, and it mounted my new partition. I just ran the install from there et voila

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Hi,
In Summary:
==========
I have Mac Mini (late 2009) which does not boot anymore and I need to install Snow Leopard using retail DVD (version 10.6). The OS/installer from the DVD does not seem to boot either. I always very much appreciate the efforts of true geeks. So please, any casual beginner, please do not demoralize with something like "cannot be done" etc.
The complete story:
==================
The start of the problem:
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Googling / Mac Forums:
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5. However using Ubuntu's bootable disk, I could access Mac-HDDs contents - and was able to successfully back-up *all* my important data.
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6.2 Empire EFI w/ Chameleon - not sure how to proceed with options presented - trying either does not work,
6.3 Super GRUB2 - boots fine, but attempting to boot from Mac-HDD fails after a couple of seconds,
6.4 Boot-132 - boots fine, prompt asks for input, but then I cannot eject/replace the DVD due to Mac-Mini (lack of) design,
6.5 Ubuntu 11.04 / 11.10 - still boots fine - just that I cannot go into Mac-OS-X from here,
6.6 TechTool Pro bootable DVD - which used to boot fine earlier stopped to boot.
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>> Looks like most of my problems are due to the fact that I have Mac-Mini which does not allow eject/replace of DVD from command prompt / out side of Mac-OS-X.
7. Tried emptying EFI partition, playing with EFI/Mac-OS partitions boot flags, Zapping the PRAM, nothing still allows me to boot either from Mac-HDD or any Mac-Bootable-DVD.
Current State:
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I am hoping for a very small step/fix that I am missing, since I can still see and access all Mac-HDD contents after booting from Ubuntu bootable DVD. However I am prepared for a good amount of exercise as well - assuming someone posts a valid/verified fix.
Things available right now:
==========================
A. Genuine Mac-Mini (Late 2009) who lost it's ability to boot either from its HDD or Mac-bootable DVDs (TechTools Pro, Mac OS X retail DVD)
B. Mac OS X 10.6 Retail DVD
C. NOT AVAILABLE - DVD that came with this Mac-Mini
D. Variety of rescue DVDs, listed in section 6 above
E. Another machine/PC with Ubuntu 11.04 - giving me ability to access internet
Thanks for reading.
Zita

I had a similar discussion recently with another user.
Your Mac mini (late 2009) originally came with Mac OS X 10.6.2 build 10A432 or build 10C2234 see http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1159 it would have come with an original install disc specific to your model of Mac which you could use to run Disk Utility from or to do a complete reinstall.
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