How do you know if the battery is dead? Detailed history. Help needed!!

So here's the story.
Bought the PowerBook G4 1.67GHz used off a trusted friend. Worked fine for 3 months or whatever up till yesterday basically.
The charger was in, orange light, but the charger in the corner was going from "Charge" to "15%" and switching (and decreasing) every 3 seconds so it seemed it wasn't really charging it or picking up the signal.
Eventually the thing died, and I thought I'd leave it off and charge (even if it is slowly) so that it will eventually be back up. The screen lid push button was lit up/glowing, so it must've gone into auto sleep.
It wouldn't turn on after that, even around 4 hours later, so I tried pushing in the the charger in a different way just to check and realised if i pushed it one way it would go Green and stay, but if i pushed it another way it would go Orange and stay. Wierd. Was it fully charged or not? It wasn't I think.
Eventually somehow, It seems a bit of charge got to it and I managed to get the Sleep password screen up and entered it in, then quickly shut it down before it depleted whatever was left already.
After this, the charger still did the same Orange / Green thing.
I looked up the problem and found a lot of those PMU reset things, did all of them to no avail. I realised that apparently the actual laptop should be able to support itself and boot without a battery - so I tried that, took out the battery and tried booting a lot of times but nothing happened.
Could it be the logic board? I knew that one of the Memory slots in the PB was actually non functioning so I knew it could be something.. Also another known problem was that a piece of the stupid charger prong on the PB charger broke, inside the laptop, but it was like that for around 6 weeks and always charged still. If it was that I assume that the charger wouldn't pick up a light at all then.
The light is still green on the laptop charger ring, but the laptop does nothing at all I can't afford a new laptop lol. I will give my local Sydney city Apple centre a ring and see if they have alternate batteries / chargers I can try but since its around 2-3 years old, I don't think they'll be able to help.

Fixed!
Took it to the Apple Store. They tried getting the stuck piece out for 20 seconds but to no avail. They searched for a spare battery and found one with charge and it worked fine. Quoted $80AU for the DC In Board and $150AU for the labour to get it fitted and fixed.
Took it home, spent half an hour with two sewing pins and managed to hook it out.
Now going to buy a new charger tomorrow (3rd-Party or Apple brand if out of stock everywhere else) and will be able to take it interstate with me after New Years! Woot woot!
Genius Bar is a huge help. God bless Apple and their customer service team.

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