t42 will not boot to bios

[greencap]

I hope that I am not repeating a topic, but I haven't seen it on this forum yet.

I bought a T42 from a flea market. It worked perfectly fine for the space of a month and then, week before last, while I was trying to install debian again, it started doing this thing where it would power on but the screen and hardware buttons (thinklight IBM blue buttons) and keyboard were dead. I could fix it by removing power from the unit and toggling the power then re-applying power. This worked fine booting from hdd until this week when I tried to install devuan. I had to reset it after an installer crash. Now the unit powers on but doesn't go to the splash screen, the fan goes wild, and the only things that light up are the catawompus z in a circle symbol and the battery symbol, even if it is plugged into AC.

Any help is appreciated a great deal.