G4 Powerbook nightmare help?

Please help. I'm on my second 17" g4 powerbook and I can't believe I'm having trouble again. I barely even use this one, just for emailing and some random safari browsing. Nothing too heavy. I was working off the battery the other night and forgot to plug the laptop back in to the AC source before I went to bed. Woke up and everything seemed dead, so I plugged it in and forgot about it.
Several hours later, when I attempted to start up the powerbook, I get the blinking "? and I know that's not good. I try every startup disk I own and either they can't find a startup volume to troubleshoot or with my original powerbook disks, I get kernel panics. What the heck?
I bought this from a friend who installed Leopard on it. He hasn't transferred over the OS disks to me yet, but since I can't get it to reboot from the original powerbook disks, I'm not sure that if I buy the newest Leopard disks, that would make a difference.
Is the hard drive completely fried? Or is it wiped clean for some reason? Since some of my startup disks can't find a startup volume, I'm wondering if for some reason, the directory structure is totally messed up. Is there a way I can create a new directory or reformat the hard drive in terminal or something?
Or am I destined to replace the hard drive? I'm a life long mac user, but definitely not impressed with the 17" g4 powerbook. Too many headaches with this computer...

It's possible that the internal backup battery is discharged. It helps the computer remember a lot of things, including the startup volume. If the battery let the computer forget what startup volume to use, you could get the question mark.
Remove the main battery and leave the computer on the AC adaptor for several hours. If the internal battery can still hold a charge, that will help.
Have you tried booting in Safe Mode? Hold SHIFT during startup. That does some directory cleanup that may help.

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