When trying to install a new operating system on Acer Aspire ICL50, the main drive is not detected. I have tried formatting with boot and nuke and have been given errors. I've tried installing arch linux, and other OS', all of them resulting in errors. Please help.

The hard drive may be failing, or just the OS or hard drive corrupted. You could try this... Pull the hard drive out, and use a USB Hard Drive Adapter to connect the hard drive to a friend's computer, and save all the personal files (documents, pictures, etc.) you can to a folder on the friend's computer or an external hard drive.
Then, you could try to do a Factory Restore on the computer, and if that works, copy your personal files back to your newly restored computer.
Good luck.