yeah, i have other firewire machines but all my firewire cables seem to have disappeared, so i need to track one down... thanks though, i'll definitely try that out. i've only been in situations that required target disk mode a few times in my life.

edit: it doesn't seem to like the USB drive very much. if i hold option at boot, it doesn't ever show up. i can't boot it in open firmware (LOAD-SIZE is too small), and if i select it as the boot drive from within 10.2 it just reboots straight into 10.2 again.