Chosen Solution
After my original HDD started to fail, I upgraded to new battery, 2x8 (16GB) of RAM, and dual 1TB SSD’s. I tried to use a bootable USB installer to install a fresh copy of macOS and when I power up I got no chime, would not boot up in any mode, just a blank screen but it was running and it seemed to read the USB because it lit up while it was being read. I tried SMC and PRAM resets and wiggled all connections and swapped around the SSD’s and RAM and nothing made any difference. Just the same, no chime, blank screen. Would not go into safe mode, recovery mode or internet recovery mode and wouldn’t even show the USB drive. Am I gonna need a new logic board? I was really excited to get this thing started again. Thanks for your input.
Let’s reduce things to a simpler config. Pull one of the SO-DIMM’s and fully disconnect the SSD’s. Also try using your original RAM At this point your bootable USB drive should boot your system. You may need to press the Option key to enter into the Startup Manager Reference: Mac startup key combinations Are you sure the USB OS installer you created is working and is the correct OS version? The highest macOS you can run on your system is Catalina. Frankly, I would stick with Sierra or Mojave if you want to get APFS. SATA based systems run better with HFS+ (Sierra) Let us know how it goes!
