[SirCastor]

I have the same symptoms as expressed in this thread

Except the solution offered there, reseating the processor board, doesn't get me any further. Here's what I posted to the G-Books mail group, but I thought I'd run it through you guys as well:

I bought a used Pismo (well used I should add) from a University
surplus shop. No indication of whether or not it even worked. It has
Ram, but no hard drive, and no battery. It was $15, and I figured
that's a good enough gamble. To my surprise and delight, I found an
old school Airport card in there, so worst case scenario, I can get at
least $40 for that on ebay.

I took it home and plugged it into a working Yo-Yo adapter (I bought
this for a Wallstreet I recently picked up) and no dice. No chime, no
nothing. I think sometimes I hear a click. I tried tricks I got out of
this list and elsewhere to get it to boot. Resetting the power
Manager, pulling the PRAM battery. Still no dice.

Somewhere in my random stumblings, I accidently hit the caps lock key,
and the LED in it lit up, so I'm pretty sure that the logic board is
getting power, and it works... I don't know what that indicates
though.

I pulled the PRAM battery, and tested it on my Multimeter. It reads
something along the lines of 2.94 Volts... so I think that's good.
It's plugged into the wall at the moment. I understand that the pram
battery may be dead and needs to sit with a power source for a bit.

And that brings me back to my title question, do I need an HD to
powerup? My goal is make sure the thing runs before I spend some cash
on a Hard Drive...

[Nivag]

It should power up without a HD installed.

You mention you pulled the PRAM battery, did you try starting it with it not plugged in or did you just remove then reattach the battery then startup?

My old Pismo failed and when the PRAM battery was removed it worked fine and once i replaced the battery it was working as usual.

[SirCastor]

I've tried every different combination with the PRAM battery, no go. The fact that I get a voltage reading out of it suggests to me that it's okay. I'm beginning to think that it's got a bad processor board in it.

I'm hoping to find someone local who has a Pismo that I can swap parts with for testing purposes.

[SirCastor]

I got it to work, and surprise, it was actually the very thing offered in other solutions. Reseating the processor card.

So to anyone who runs into this problem, let me share with you what tipped me off. Someone somewhere wrote me: "push the card down until you hear it snap into place". This snapping hadn't been mentioned before, and somehow I managed to just let it sit nicely in place. It requires a bit of force, but you'll definitely know when it's in.

[~bash $]

So, nice find all in all. Love the Pismo ... miss it. Sigh.