Hi AmiXDel
So I wonder, if the Rayovoc battery on the mother board is dead, would it cause it to act like this?
It may be that battery is okay but the NVRAM is corrupt. While powering on, try holding down Command, Option, P, and R key until you hear the chime. This is known in Mac parlance as "Zapping the PRAM". ;-)
If you don't hear the chime, then pull out the motherboard and press the Cuda reset switch. It's a tiny push-button switch on the mobo (look in the 5400 user's manual online if you can't find it). This does a fuller job of resetting the NVRAM than the above key combination. Re-insert the mobo and try again.
If that doesn't work, take out the mobo, remove the battery, and leave the mobo for an hour or so. Plug the battery back in, put the mobo back in, and try again.
If after that it still doesn't work, then replacing the battery probably won't make a difference. The machine should boot - even without a PRAM battery.
I have a 5400 (actually it has a 6500 mobo now), and in my experience it's really picky about its PRAM state. When the battery runs down, I get all sorts of weird problems, such as PCI cards reporting wrong PCI IDs, etc. I have had PRAM corruptions that even hitting the Cuda button won't fix, but taking the mobo out and letting it discharge generally fixes the problem.
Having said all that, the 5400 IMHO is a great piece of hardware. I ran Linux on mine for several years. I upgraded it recently with the mobo from a 6500 (250MHz 603e plus ATI Rage-II gfx - you can get these quite cheaply if you pay attention on eBay). My daughter now uses it.
Cheers,
Rich
