How to access old G5 Beige Tower that won't boot?

I own a couple of computers, a G5 Beige Tower and some early iMac I believe (come to think of it, now I can't picture what it looks like).
The G5 won't boot up—I haven't given it a try in years, but I refused to throw it away. I think it shows a flashing question mark inside of a macintosh icon.
I lugged that thing into an Apple store long ago and they managed to retrieve SOME files (they sure didn't try very hard, imo), so that tells me that I may still be able to access the hard drive, is this correct? Do I only need a boot drive somehow? I'm not sure if I even have one, floppy or CD.
The second computer was fried in an EMP. Lightning must've struck somewhere nearby (there was a huge storm at the time) and the craziest pulse of energy went through my body, I'll never forget it. It was like exploding in slow-motion, every particle in my body pushing outward, and when it was over, I was fine (shaken), but my computer was dead along with other electronic gizmos. Any opinions on if I should give up on this?
Would an Apple genius even know what to do if I took that computer in?
Both are old but may have some files from college that I'd love to recover.

Hi,
You mentioned a "G5 Beige Tower". The last beige Macintosh tower computer was a G3 model (http://support.apple.com/kb/sp406). Could it be this one instead?
If it is the G3 model in the technical specifications above, minimum Mac OS 8.0 would be needed for startup. This could be an appropriate/supported system CD. It could also be the Disk Tools PPC floppy that has been made available for download from Apple (you would then need a working older Mac with a built-in floppy drive and Disk Copy 6.3.3 in order to create a bootable floppy from the disk image):
http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English -North_American/Macintosh/System/Mac_OS_8.1_Update/Disk_Tools_PPC.img.bin
http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English -North_American/Macintosh/Utilities/Disk_Copy/Disk_Copy_6.3.3.smi.bin
A bad logic board battery can sometimes cause startup problems. You may also want to try a PRAM reset:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379
Another possibility would be to remove the internal hard drive (the same could be tried with the iMac). An IDE/ATA drive can be connected to an external USB adapter (such as the example below) and then read on a more modern Mac (or even a PC with the correct software).
http://www.newertech.com/products/usb3_universaldriveadap.php
If necessary, disassembly guides can be found, for example, at ifixit.com.
Jan

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