Why isn't my hard drive being recognized and lcd not lit? help!

Hey Guys,

I recently had the great idea of trying to get my old MacBook 13" 1.83GHZ Core Duo back into commission. I went out and bought a new hard drive because the hard drive seized up a while ago and i didnt have money to replace anything. I ordered a new battery and power supply from amazon and that's on the way. For the time being I can use my dads macbook charger to power my macbook.

When I plug in my computer and power it up, the lcd powers up and the backlight powers up then the backlight turns off. So I hit the power button, gray screen turns on powers up, then backlights off but the folder with the ? comes up. (New hard drive so i figured that'll be normal.) That's problem number 1.

Since I have the new hard drive, I figured I have to re format it. I popped in leopard start up disk and went ahead to select language. I agreed to terms and brought up the screen where I choose destination, but my hard drive isn't recognized. It's spinning so it's powered but not registering. What do I do?