how do i know if i can boot from a cd on a completley formatted computer?
Booting from CD is a function of your computer's BIOS, not how your hard drive is set up. When you turn your computer on, you can usually hit <del> (or F1 or some such thing.... look for the message) to enter your BIOS setup. Look for the boot sequence setting and see if your computer supports CD-ROM booting.

where can i get the boot DISK (not CD) images for RH8?
You should be aware that 8.0 is not the newest version, but if for some reason that's what you want...

ftp://carroll.cac.psu.edu/pub/linux/...os/i386/images

i need to find a place to down load linux redhat disk images that wont take extreeeemly long
I assume you mean CD images, and not floppy images.

ftp://carroll.cac.psu.edu/pub/linux/....0/en/iso/i386

If that server is busy (which it often is), you can find a list of mirrors at http://www.redhat.com/download/mirror.html