Thinkpad T41 won't boot

I'm very new to OSx86 but have been playing around with trying to get OS X on my Thinkpad T41. At this point I'll be happy to get just about ANY OS running on it.

Here's what I did:

A while back I burned IATKOS (v5 i think) to a DVD and was able to boot up from the DVD and run the installer. The installer froze up half way through so I rebooted BUT then it wouldn't start from the IATKOS DVD. I just got a black screen with a flashing cursor. I played around in the BIOS some, and used the built-in "emergency restore" which I guess was supposed to install windows on the hard drive or something. After I did that, I was able to start booting from the IATKOS DVD, but I only got to the apple screen with the "no can do" symbol (/) on it. Kept trying to reboot, but then i just got the black screen with blinking cursor again.

Next I tried removing the hard drive and doing a snow leopard install on it (with kexts, chameleon, etc mentioned on boards) but still getting the black screen with flashing cursor.

Now I'm trying to boot from a windows vista DVD and that's not working either. Black screen. Flashing cursor. I've tried the boot sequence with diagnostics on - doesn't seem to find any problems. I've got the DVD chosen as first in the boot sequence.

Anyone have an idea how I can get this laptop to boot again? I'd love to get OS X on it, but at this point, I'd settle for Vista or even XP.

Ideas appreciated. TIA!