i just "fixed" a possibly major problem similar to this by having a lot of patience.
to make it short: that OS9 claims a partition had to be initialised, or that OSX refuses to boot when a drive or volume seems to be corrupt, does not mean that the drive or volume or the files in it are actually corrupt.
when i got your situation right, your next step could be to boot the machine without the drive connected and then see what happens when you attach the drive later.
(even better would be to always have multiple boot volumes already built into the machine.)
as soon as you are seeing your volumes again, first check the integrity of you files, then make a backup of everything, before you start fiddling around with disc doctor or techtool.