Spent some time clearing the partition (on the second drive) that had Panther on it.
Then used CCC to copy my main 10.2.8. over to that empty partition.
After making sure all was well with that partition, I then installed Panther on top of my 10.2.8. partition (main drive - western digital 8mb cashe).
Talk about checking with all the utilities before .. in between .. and afterwards! gsssss.!.
Everything went slick as silk [bit more time consuming than I anticipated] except for transparentdock. Installed the 'wrong' version. Duh.
Ten, fifteen minutes later had that fixed.
Ran all the checkers again ... panther runs great.
Now I've got to find a new panther icon for that partition.