iMac G3, Os X, No Partitioning?

Ok so my lovely G3 iMac has done me well since I got it and is running Tiger nicely, only problem is like no disc space on the system drive, and I was trying to install Xcode to do some school work but theres not enough room. I tried everything to reduce the space and erase files I didnt need and move everything I could to the second partition, but there's still less than a gig free.
From everything I've read your supposed to have the 8gb partition or it wont boot os x, but is there any way around this? or possibly I misread and my mac isn't affected by this? (its a slot loader)
I tried installing without a partition once ( the installer didn't say anything about it, not sure if its supposed to or not) and it ran fine for a while, then the hard drive gave out, but it was a used hard drive and the place I got it from couldn't get it working after that either. I wasn't sure if it crashed cuz of not having the partition or if it was just a crappy hard drive, but I didn't wanna risk it again.

Maybe i'm just shooting in the dark here, but does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks.

 

You have no idea how happy I am to hear that. I wish I would have known that a few years ago though. The reason I was trying to find out is I have an extra 160g hard drive I wanted to throw in since the one I have now is slow and dying, and figured it would be a waste if i needed that 8g partition.

I got really excited about installing it this weekend, but then remembered I'm going up to calgary so it will have to wait till later. oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy!!!

Thank you for the fast response. I love this site. Its nice to get positive posts here. This one forum I went to for a long time but rarely posted at always has rude posters. anytime I post there I almost instantly get a "old topic ... locked" and sometimes people just post a link with no explanation and then minutes later the post is deleted or something with no warning. It just got so retarded I stopped going there altogether. its nice here.