General laptop question

[bill1971]

I've never owned a laptop, so I don't mess with them much.

I have someone who handed me a Dell Latitude CPi A-Series notebook, and asked if I could get it going for under $200, including my labor. It would just be used for Word processing.

There's no AC Adapter - not even sure there's a battery installed, as this unit has been stripped of its Floppy and CD-ROM drives.

So my first question is - can this thing boot using only an AC Adapter, w/ no battery installed, or if the battery is dead and not rechargeable? (New battery, of course, would be out of the question).

I've found AC adapters to fit this model on E-Bay for under $30 delivered. Would this be enough to power this thing up?

And I guess I get into this thing from underneath??

Thanks for the input.

- Bill

You could run it just fine w/o a battery and just use the AC adapter.