Clean Instal without disk

Ok so I am taking my old 1st gen macbook home for Christmas, not my Macbook Pro. The Macbook has not been used in months and after messing around with it I really want to format and clean install, however the disk drive is busted. Is there anyway to do a clean install, or format or reinstall without using the disk drive?

Thanks
Adam

Buy an external USB or Firewire SuperDrive. As long as you have your original install DVD media you can boot from the external drive and do a clean install.

Regards.

is there anyway i could boot from a usb hardrive and do it that way.

No, because you need your original install media to do a clean install. And I don't believe running a disk image from an external USB hard drive will work.

Can't you borrow an external DVD drive from someone? Once you get the system reinstalled you can always clone or back it up to an external HD.

Regards.

I think you could use your MBP as the external HD by doing one of those Target boot up thingamajigs. I've never done that, but maybe someone here could tell you more about it.