Time Machine from one Mac to another without cloning

I'm pretty sure Migration Assistant won't work for this so I was hoping there was another method.

I have an iMac that is currently using Time Machine for periodic backups. I've got a year's work of backups on the TM drive and there are various states of a major project on it.

I'm moving from NZ back to the states and the most logical thing is to sell the iMac here before I go and get a new one upon arriving back in the states.

Is there any way I can hook the TM drive up to the new machine and access the backups from our current iMac? I don't want to clone the new iMac to match the current one, or at least I don't think I do, so from what I've read Migration Assistant isn't going to work for me. And I was hoping there would be some way to view the various backup states of the current iMac on its replacement.

If it matters, I've only been backing up user data, not system or application data, via TM on the current iMac.

Suggestions?

Thanks.

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tG

 

Thanks, spinnerlys. I had searched prior to posting but couldn't find a situation that matched mine. Didn't know about MRoogle, though.

I wasn't aware that the TM drive could be searched via the Finder. Very good to know. If nothing else I definitely won't lose the data.

Just thought of a TM cloning question, though. If I'm only backing up user data areas with TM, can I use Migration Assistant to just create a clone of the same area on the new machine? When I hear 'clone' I expect it to be a full system clone, but it just occurred to me it might be possible to just clone specific areas.

Can Migration Assistant work that way for cloning?

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tG