Thought I would close this story with a happy ending.
Using the Kingwin adapter with single partition for 9, things were much better but still not right! No more ? before final boot. However, still flashing with occasional hangs on black screen.
Thanks to your very own Fury deBongo (crowd roars), we got in a conversation of all things Quicksilver 2002. One question asked was about the monitor I dragged home still attached to QS.
This was the ASD single cable 2002 model...the one feeds off my creaky old power supply. I got up at 2am, dragged out second ancient 115vac monitor with analog monitor cable. The rest is like the movie where the clouds break and the sun peeks out, what the hell I'm retired.
Sata drive now formatted two partitions, OS9 and Tiger on the second. Boots either great, no problem!
Thanks all for your time!