prepping imac hard drive in a powermac

i always try to read as much as i can be fore i go posting questions on forums, but this one i couldn't find an answer to. i have a powermac g4 400 and the girl im seeing has a slot load imac 500 g4. i bought her a new hard drive for her machine, but she lives in a different town. so my question is... can i load panther onto the hard drive using my powermac and then when i see her, just slap the drive into her slot load imac? are the loads hardware specific or is a os x install the same for every machine? thanx bunches!

yea, you shouldnt have a problem.... where i work, we would set up a mac with an image of panther with all the programs the school has licenses for, etc, and then we just send it out over netboot to all of the macs in the district... imacs, emacs, ibooks, everything... your osx image is its own thing, totally separate from what hardware your computer has on it....

at least thats my experience with it... if anyone has had different, please share..i wouldnt want him to be mislead.. but thats what ive seen of it

awesome! thats kinda what i was thinking... worth a shot at least. just trying to convert upgrade time into quality time with the miss'

Before you try to install OS X in the iMac make sure the firmware is updated otherwise you can kill the iMac. Check http://lowendmac.com/imacs/2001-500.html. Besides the info there it has a link to an Apple tech note about the firmware.

proper! she would be pissed if i fragged her imac!

*update* ok, so the swap went verry smoove! prepped the drive in the powermac. loaded os, ran updates, installed her software... put both machines on my network. copied all her files and settings over to the new drive in my powermac. opened up the imac, swapped drives. butta! thanx for the help guys! peace.
sj