PowerBook G4 froze, won't boot, black screen

I have a PowerBook G4 1.67GHz (DL-Hi Res) running OS 10.5.8 with 1GB of RAM. It has been a great machine; reliable with no major issues throughout the years and still fast for its age. Unfortunately two days ago the screen came to a complete freeze and since then I haven't been able to boot into its OS.
In particular, that afternoon I visited the Weather Channel web site and then left the house. When I came back three hours later, I found the screen frozen at the Weather Channel site. The mouse cursor would not move, the clock (on upper right side of the screen) was also stuck at 4:10pm, which was about the time when I last used the computer, and the fan was running faster than normal but not spinning out of control; moreover, the laptop felt as warm as when I stream live video from the Web, not hot though. Since the computer was unresponsive I decided to turn it off by pressing and holding its power button for several seconds. I should mention that there was nothing connected to the computer when this happened and that there was nothing that was installed, updated or upgraded recently.
When I attempted to turn it back on, the sleep light came and stayed on, the startup tone was heard once, the fan started running at normal speed and the optical drive did its normal startup spin; meanwhile, the screen was pitch black and stayed like that. Five seconds later the optical drive did its normal startup spin again; five seconds later it did it again and then again and again.... and it kept doing it every five seconds until I shut the computer off by pressing and holding its power button. I am not sure whether or not the hard drive was spinning during the startup.
Any ideas what the problem might and how to revive my powerbook (if possible)? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Tom, thank you very much for replying.
I read the links you provided and here is everything I've done so far to revive my powerbook:
- Started up without the battery (though the battery is fully functional)
- Started up with the battery installed
- Started up in Single-user Mode
- Attempted to reset the PRAM
- Started up in Safe Mode
- Tried to get into the Startup Manager
- Attempted to reset the PMU
- Started up in Open Firmware
All of the above attempts failed to produce any good results. Each time I tried to start up the laptop, the sleep light indicator would come and stay on, then came the chime (except for two times), the fan would run at normal speed and the optical drive would keep doing its startup spin every 5 seconds until I would shut the computer off.
Here is the last thing I tried... Since I was even unable to get into Open Firmware I decided to press and hold the power button, as suggested by one of the Apple Support documents, until the computer is forced to boot into Open Firmware. Instead of the Open Firmware what I got was a brief high-speed spin of the fan, fast blinking of the sleep light indicator and a single deep, somewhat loud and long beep. What I just described lasted for a few (maybe several) seconds and then the sleep light stabilized, the chime came on and the optical drive started doing its thing every 5 seconds.
Any more ideas / suggestions?

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PowerBook G4 froze, won't boot, black screen

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