Can't boot whatever I try

I'll start off with the specs of this old box:

• Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R

• Core2-Duo (Not sure of exact number, but one of the later ones. This was built just as the i-series processors were coming in. The MOBO takes an LGA775, if that helps)

• 4GB DDR2 (2x Corsair Dominator @ 1066Mhz)

• 1TB SATA WD Caviar Black HDD

• Gigabyte GV-N95TOC-5121

I tried to boot Sierra, but got a USB Overcurrent error - turns out that was because of a USB2 PCI card. I removed it, and then managed to reach IOConsoleUsers: gIOScreenLockState 3, hs 0, bs 0, now 0, sn 0x0 before a loop.

I then tried Lion, figuring that maybe Sierra was too new for the hardware - nada. Lion got stuck at unable to find driver for this platform: \"ACPI\".n"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-1504.15.2/iokit/Kernel/IOPlatformExpert.cpp

If I try to boot lion without -v, I get CPU 1 has no HPET assigned to it.

I need to get this thing running at least yosemite, by either installing it or upgrading to it. At this rate though, I feel like I've tried everything and I can't make it work.

By the way, I'm creating my boot disks with the following methods:

For Sierra/High Sierra, I partition the drive, run createinstallmedia on one partition and install clover to the other.

For Lion, I restore the ESD to one partition, and Enoch to the other.