Hello everyone, hope you can give some advice. Trying to figure out if
I should spend money on this system or look for something else.

I have a wallstreet (M4753/266/14.1"/64MB) powerbook that wont turn on
anymore. About six months ago the hard drive died and I removed it,
leaving the powerbook on the shelf afterwards, since I did not have
the need for the laptop.

Now that I have the time and could actually use the system, I am
having trouble turning it on. Basically, it wont do anything when I
press the power button. I tried reseting the PRAM (shft+fn+ctrl+power)
but all I get is a short green light on the front and a single click
coming out of the speakers. It seems that the screen gets power
(depending on the ambient light I can see the screen flickering, but
that does not happen all the time).

Having read that the symptoms are sometimes caused by a bad
connection, I went ahead and reseated all of the components (RAM,
logic board, connector cables, etc) but did not have any luck getting
the system to turn on. If it helps, all of the parts inside seem to be
original, and I moved the RAM from the lower slot to the upper slot.
But no go.

As far as I can tell I am getting power from the AC adapter, since the
PRAM reset activates the light and the click when batteries are not
in. I think that the batteries are not getting charged, because the
unit does not heat up not matter how long I leave it plugged in (but
from what I read about power management on these models, the batteries
wont charge unless the unit can function correctly otherwise?!).

Having given you some background, I would appreciate it if you can
provide some advice on what to try next. Is it possible that the PB
wont turn on without the hard drive present (I was planning to buy a
new hard drive and a drive bracket anyway, but dont want to spend the
money unless I am sure that will remedy the problem). Could it be the
PRAM battery (since the unit sat for so long)? Or is it something
different?

Thanks again, and let me know if there is any other info I can
provide.

Mer