iMac G5 iSight 2006? HD boo boo, dvd internal or external

[kNewton]

Solved iMac G5 iSight 2006? HD boo boo, dvd internal or external

I bought it new and had no problems for years before this, except the dvd drive was iffy.
The computer wouldn't let me sign into an existing account ...

( login would accept password, disappear, desktop color would change slightly, then login box would reappear)

but by adding new accounts, I could still access all my data, so I only started burning data off of disk.
then I couldn't log into any accounts, so I hooked the iMac up to my xps420 Hac in Target mode and grabbed everything.

When I plugged in firewire, the Hac showed a "This drive is severly damaged and recommend reformatting" message, so I did and tried to reinstall 10.6 over the Target mode.

I didn't catch, I got the flashing System question mark folder. Then I held down Shift and it did the same thing.

I cannot reinstall with a dvd as the dvd drive is not working, so I swapped in a new HD "non WD", switched the temp sensor and tried to reinstall 10.6 over Target mode, got same flashing master folder.

Then I put the drive in my Hac and tried to install 10.6, then swapped drive into iMac, same flashing folder.

Lastly I tried to use Pacifist to install just Essentials, I screwed up and installed them into my Hac system folder.

$%^&^.
I new I should have either ran an update or tracked down the install date of the new files, but I switched off the power and couldn't get my XPS420 to boot as mac since then.

I tried a new sata cable switch and now wonder if it might be the motherboard or something else I can't troubleshoot. I plugged in a friends Lion USB drive and got the prohibited sign.



So I want to get the iMac going first and I need to decide if I should:

1. buy another WD drive like the one I took out ( does it make a difference as long as I switch the Temp sensor?)

2. buy a replacement internal DVDdrive and see if I can directly install to the HD

3. buy an external dvd drive ( can they be booted from by holding down 'c'?) and try to install to the HD.

So, what would you do?
I don't wanna take it to apple for $$$, but I want to run it as long as I can.

 

[Urizen]

Did you simply consider, creating a bootable Snow Leopard installation inside a USB/Firewire drive, and installing from there?

You can do that directly from Disk Utility if you have the Snow Leopard installation DVD

Also to answer question 3, yes it should work also from an external DVD

Not really sure about question 1 and 2

 

[kNewton]

I borrowed my own external dvd drive from my bro and will try to boot 10.6 from it, installing to a new internal drive.
Once I have done that, if the computer will not boot, I'm gonna take some of the innards and try to cram them into my G3.

 

[kNewton]

Installed 1 TB drive and installed 10.6 from $12 garage sale external dvd drive. Downloading Combo update and... Quicktime is built in?

I got a 7 Pro license and I'm gonna use it.

Core Duo 1.83 so much slower than Hacked xps420 Core2Quad 2.4, plus has 17 inch screen compared with 22 inch, making me blind.


Thanks Urizen for the suggestion.