Performa 200 Booting Problem

Question

My uncle was cleaning out his closet and found a  Performa 200 with keyboard, mouse and power cord. I plugged it in and turned it on, but all I hear, I believe, is the hard drive winding up and running. The screen is blank.
When I turn it off, for a brief moment there is a flash of white in the middle third of the screen.
Is there a trick to getting this to boot up after many years in a closet? Do I need to reset something or leave it plugged in for 24 hours?
(BTW, that screen is REALLY small.)
MotionMan

Answer 1

MM,
There is a cheap trick for waking up the monitor on the Quadra line and PPC line in the pizza box form factors. It had to do with the energy save feature.  I have never had occation to test it on a  Performa 200.  It will cost you nothing to try.
On the 6100, the power button would turn on the computer but not the monitor.  The monitor was turned on by a relay circuit.  The PRAM battery had to be good to wake up the monitor at startup.  The cheap fix was to turn the computer on, then turn it off, then turn it back on quickly.  The wall power would load the capacitors on the motherboard.  Turning the computer off and then on quickly allowed the capacitor power to energize the monitor circuit instead of the PRAM battery.  If you wait too long before turning the computer on again, the power stored in the capacitors will discipate and the motherboard acts like it is dead again at start up.
On, pause, then off, then on again quickly will start several models without having to replace dead PRAM batteries.  We have a platinum G3 DT that has worked for fourteen years with a dead PRAM battery so it is possible to run computers without replacing the battery.  It is annoying to change the date and time control panel but with hundreds of older macs, it makes no sense to replace batteries in all of them.
Ji~m