Can't boot without CD, cpus=1, safe mode :(

[Taylorwilsdon]

I decided to try Tiger because I like it better to begin with, and I heard it had better luck with some hardware.

 

I used JaS 10.4.8 with the Chameleon Jmicron IDE patch.

 

My stats:

Motherboard - Right now, its an ECS gf7050vt-m. SATA Mode select is set to ACPI in BIOS.

CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16ghz 45NM.

Video - XFX 8800GT Alpha Dog edition.

Memory - 4GB OCZ SLI Edition RAM DDR2-800.

PSU - Antec Earthwatts 500w

Case - Antec Sonata III

Hard drive - 100gb IDE hdd, 2 partitions, one for OS (25gb), one for storage (preexisting, lots of stuff, 75gb)

Optical - Sony IDE DVD+RW (currently connected through USB)

Monitor - Apple Cinema Display 23"

 

Here's the scenario:

If its just the harddrive plugged in, I boot, choose it as the boot device and it either says "Loading Darwin/X86" (then flashes "Starting Darwin/X86") and reboots immediatly or just shows nothing and reboots immediatly. There is no prompt to press F8, and doing so does nothing.

 

If I have harddrive and USB DVD drive plugged in, with the install disk in the drive, I can boot off that, press F8, and use flags "rd=disk0s2 cpus=1 -x" (disk0s2 is where Tiger is installed) and it will boot.

 

My questions:

Can I boot without the DVD in the drive? If so, how.

Can I use both CPU's? This is a total wash if not.

Can I boot without safe mode? Again, super annoying.

 

Help, please