SuperDrive inop....upgrade options?

[JakuMoku]

My superdrive in my 17" iMac (1GHz) took a dump recently.

I am going to purchase the Family Pack Tiger release and
upgrade my wife's iMac, and want to do mine too.

Is there some way I can do the upgrade across the network? (Ethernet)

I am planning on replacing the drive in the near future anyway, just
not now. (it's a money thing, you see..... )

Any suggestions would be appreciated

 

[symphonix]

I have been trying to do a similar thing for the iBook G3-500 I gave to my mother. The combo-drive on it had burned out and would now only read CD-ROM, not DVD, meaning I had no trouble setting it up for her with 10.2 installed, but any higher than that would require me to rig up a DVD drive in a firewire enclosure (there's no point replacing the drive in the iBook - it's over 4.5 years old now and simply not worth the effort, especially since it still runs perfectly for everything my mum needs, like email, iPhoto, iTunes and MS-Office).

As best I can work out, the only really effective option in this case is to get yourself a firewire capable drive enclosure at a computer swapmeet or discounter, and "borrow" a standard DVD drive from the sort of PC-owning buddy who is willing to let you pull their machine apart. A tall order, but not impossible.

 

[fryke]

You could also use a FW cable to use Target Mode on the PB. (Start up holding down Apple-"t" with both computers connected via FW.) You could then use the DVD in the iMac and install on the PB's drive. I'm _really_ not sure whether everything gets installed correctly this way, since the installer 'sees' the iMac instead of the PB, but it might work...