X won't let me install 9 or 9.1

[recordplayer]

ok. so, i got os x and was all excited. the whole reason i wanted to update was so i could just do a clean install and clean my hard drive of everything previous. (i had been experiencing several bugs in my system plus just needed to erase everything i didn't need to free up hard drive space.) so, i started fresh. the problem is that now i need 9.1 to run nearly all of my apps. when i try to install 9, X tries to startup classic but obviously can't since i don't have it yet. when i tried booting off the cd by pressing the 'c' key, i just got a blank black screen! i don't get an option to startup in classic either. when i went to a mac dealer near my house they told me to buy another hard drive, install 9 on that then somehow erase my existing hard drive, then install X on the new hard drive as well. yeah, i thought that sounded like a lot of money and time to install 9 too. any suggestions are greatly appreciated. thank you for your time.

[carguy4evr]

try this

I'm not sure if this will help you out, but try the following before you spend a bundle. Could you be a lilttle clearer about how you can be running X and not already have OS 9 installed.?

try this anyway

1. insert your OS 9 system disk into your CD drive
2. restart and hold down the " option " key until you see some icons
appear on your screen in the middle
3. of these icons you should have one for OS X, one for OS 9 and one for
the system disk of OS 9 (you inserted it in step 1).
4. try clicking the " OS 9" icon, and then clicking the arrow button on the right
to boot from the OS 9 system folder.
5. if this doesn't work, reboot again and select the CD icon and continue
from there. Booting in this way should let you do a clean install from CD.

[Java1Guy]

I am/was in a similar boat, except that it booted from the CD and would run the installer. Unfortunately the installer didn't find any suitable drives to install to... By opening the Utilities folder and running the drive initializer i was able to reformat the hard drive and now its re-installing 9.2.1.

How I got here -- i really want to just run the latest OS X (10.1.3+). I just ordered a PowerBook G4 which was pre-installed but came up in 9.1. Not knowing OS X was also probably pre-installed and just needed a dual/alternate boot, I installed OS X from CD... and being agressive(?) I picked to format the hard drive in UFS! Well, i then found out i couldn't update from 10.0.4 to 10.1.anything. And of course something i downloaded said UFS not recommended (if even supported).
So Apple shipped me a new CD and that's what i'm putting in now... starting with 9.2.1.

Good luck!
-- Mark