My Powerbook?

Hello,

I recently was given an older G4 Powerbook (running Mac OS X panther), but the whole thing hard drive in all was wiped clean I was given all the original disk's and booklet's to restore it. Except now I get to step 4 choosing a destination and it gives me nothing? So I'm going to have it checked out to see if it just needs to be properly formatted or if I need a whole new hard drive, if it just needs to be properly formatted can I use a new operating system? My parents both have newer Macbooks and currently run Snow Leopard so I was just wondering if I could run that.

Thanks

Ronda.