I killed my OSX with Linux... can't reinstall HELP!

[Lazarus18]

OK, so I have a big huge useless Pismo Powerbook now.

The story (in brief):
I installed Yellow Dog Linux on my Powerbook, wiping the hard drive and starting from scratch. Worked just fine.

Realizing I needed a second partition to reinstall OSX I booted from my OS9 CD and used the drive setup tool to repartition everything into two drives. I then reinstalled YDL (they say it's best to put that on and then OSX). Then I tried to put on OSX.

Nothing. I'm stuck. I have an original X.0 CD and a burned X.1 CD which I think is the whole thing (too lazy to go to an Apple store and get one). I can boot from the X.0 CD, but when it's installing everything it hangs with some message about being unable to unarchive a file, and it politely asks me to restart. The X.1 cd won't boot either by pressing C or by double clicking the installer from 9. Either way I end up getting the beach ball of death on a grey happy Mac screen.


Which brings me to my next point. I can install 9. That's about it. I guess I could get Linux back on there too. But all of this was supposed to be in addition to OSX. (Linux is currently gone, as I'm trying any and all configurations to get X on there.)

I can't recreate the sequence that originally got X on there. I had 9.1 then put on the public beta, then X.0, then updated to X.1 all on the same partition. I no longer have the PB.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

[Lazarus18]

So I watched it fail this time. What it says when I try to install X.0 is this.

Operation not permitted. (this is up for a second or two)

Then it changes to:
Could not unarchive files.
Please try installing again.

[Lazarus18]

I think I enjoy talking to myself... but maybe someday someone else will see this and solve their problem....

So I'm not stuck anymore. I let the X.1 CD flounder long enough and it gave me a kernel panic. This made me think it was something hardware related, and I realized that I had installed the PB before I did a RAM upgrade. I took out the new RAM and the X.1 CD booted fine, I repartitioned, and it seems to be almost done installing.

Here's hoping I can put the RAM back in....