Logic board replacement still no luck

I bought a MacBook pro unibody a1286 model faulty off eBay and am attempting to resserect it. it came without a battery, HDD or charger. I have bought all 3 however no harddrive is installed yet as it hasn't arrived.

The logic board required replacing so I have done this, I noticed a pin sized hole in the keyboard ribbon cable when doing the replacement.

My question is, do I need the harddrive in for the laptop to function relatively normally? I've tried putting the OSX Lion disc in to see if I can get any activity but it won't load, just makes disc drive noises.

The keyboard backlight also doesn't light up whether this is due to the hole I don't know. It does power on and chime and I can get to a screen with a cursor if I hold ALT, any further information would be greatly appreciated.

Edd