I recently purchased an ibook and had a couple of quick questions.
The ibook came with no hard drive or power cord. Am in the process of purcahsing the cord now.
When i start it up i get the chime but nothing shows up on the screen, is it necessary for the ibook to have a hard drive before anything with appear on the screen and also is there anything i can do to test out the ibook before i purchase a hard drive.
Thanks in advance

[rasmits]

The screen should turn on, at least, and will display a grey screen with a flashing folder and a question mark. A completely black screen is a bad sign.

How do you start it up without a power cord?

[Elysium]

After the startup chime, does the iBook sound like it is running or does it seem to power down?

If you've got any of the system or OS discs, then you could try starting up using one of those. That should at least tell you if the machine is capable of booting up.

[Bill M]

Read this:

http://www.apple.com/support/ibook/faq/

Some iBooks had bad logic boards, including my wife's old iBook G3 800. It was working well until one day it failed to boot, the display would just stay dead black. Not even firewire disk mode would work. Apple said their logic board repair program had expired so I would have to pay $$$ to get it fixed. I balked at it and simply removed the HD and got my wife a black MacBook. If the iBook you bought has no HD, check the serial numbers listed on the website above... maybe the previous owner went through a similar experience as mine.