Upgrading to 10.3

I have a older clamshell and i am trying to upgrade to 10.3 I have sufficient ram and harddrive space and I have the panther install retail cds. When I first tried to upgrade my cd rom stop working so I lost everything because i didnt do a backup. I got 9.2 back on my clamshell but i cant get 10.3 to load using a external dvd-rw drive. Is there a way to do this or could by cd be corrupt or should i just wait for my cd rom to come in. Or will xpostfacto help me load from a external dvd rom
thanks

can you put the ide disk in another mac and install

otherwise you will have to wait for a new optical drive