Old Compaq Presario won't boot

[Planefreak]

To begin with... I got a free laptop and want to play around with it.

Its a Compaq Presario 1800 that is about 10 years old.

I got the laptop for free from a friend for some help on one of their machines. It doesn't work though.

I test the power cord which works fine, then the battery, though old is does except power (just doesn't hold it), then I tore it apart and scanned the hard drive to see if there was anything on it. Looked like a copy of 98. So I continue tearing it apart and got to the motherboard battery. I picked up a new one and put it all back together and still nothing.

So far I can't find any place that indicates it is charging or whether or not the power button does anything. It has been dropped but all the boards look like they were fine, just one corner of the laptop is a little cracked.

Any ideas?

[EzyStvy]

I have an almost new ten year old Sony lappy that won't run without a working battery. It didn't have a power cord when it was given to me...Spent 100 bucks on a new cord...Was able to use/borrow a battery from a place called Battery Plus...Machine fired right up...Course the new battery costs another 100 bucks so I passed and just stroed the machine away since I didn't want to spend that kind of money on just an old pc.

[Planefreak]

I agree and I though that's how most laptop are. I might have some fun with it and open the battery and wire a different battery in and see if I can get it to start up.