MBP 2013 currently running Linux - trying to install El Capitan so I can try OCLP

Issue is using restore I am not able to see the internal had drive at all. I built a El Capitan bootable installer on another machine but does not see the drive on the MBP. Then built a bootable El Capitan instance and it can't see the drive either - and I mean at the hardware level not just trouble recognizing the MBR partitioned Linux drive - the only storage device it sees is the USB drive.

If I remove the USB drive and reboot it still boots into Linux so the internal drive is not defective. Some online reading suggests I get a USB adapter and delete the partitions from another machine and then MacOS will recognize it again. Skeptical before I spend money on the adapter curious if anybody has run into this before. Thank you.

Author: @Das_Rote_Han