i see alot of them on ebay that say they cannot boot.. do they have some type of ticking timebomb on the caps or something?
is recapping the fix? it would be stupid if it was as easy as removing the current battery + booting without it inplace.. still plgged in electrically.
thats what your're saying ?? correct?
There is a major difference between "Does not turn on " and "Does not boot." Most of these probably have dead hard drives, which until the Duo 2300 and the PB 190/5300, were all SCSI (with couple of exceptions). Trying to find a new or working like new SCSI 2.5in hard drive for a PowerBook is like looking for Hen's Teeth. Thus they may have tried to put in an IDE Unit and find out that the IDE Laptop Hard Drive is 44 pins connector and a SCSI Laptop Hard Drive is 34 pins connector - making them think "There is no way this can be fixed. Damn Apple and their proprietary systems." That's 1.
2 - many ebay sellers use the term "does not boot" for machines that do not turn on at all! It's maybe due to language barriers or what ever the case. For that you need to PM the seller and ask if it turns on at all and if it does, what does it do. If the unit does turn on and gives a flashing "?" in the floppy icon, then the problem is the hard drive.
The board will (eventually) need a recapping, as will the LCD. But if it turns on and gives the flashing "?" Disk Icon, then its a good gamble to invest in.
As for Hard Drives "Upgrades" - I would invest in an Aztec Monster (a CF to SCSI adapter). The SD2SCSI would be my next gamble. They are expensive (around $120 to $200) but you can get a 4GB to 16GB CF or SD and slice it up to 2GB Slices (for System 6 and 4GB for System 7) for next to nothing and the Powerbook will be very happy with it.