CF-29 Mk 5-the story so far...

Excuse my rambling...!
So I'm at work the other day, being a surveyor's assistant.
While clearing some blackberry bushes on the side of the road, what do I spy gleaming thru the darkness?
A CF-29N.
Now, My girlfriend hates that I bring things home from 'the ditch' (anything not found in a store brand new is from 'the ditch'), but how could I resist?! It's a hobby of mine to install Linux on any old PC I can find...
So, I drag it out, beside it in a bundle was the ac adapter as well-weird.
took it home, cleaned it up a bit on the outside, and dried it out for a couple of days...
Took the harddrive out, and stuck it in my Vaio, booted from a Linux DVD, mounted the drive and found the last files written to the disk were in March 2010-so it's been sitting in the rain and wind for 8 months or so-could there be any hope? I have it at a laptop repair shop getting tested-when I plugged it in at home, it made a medium long beep, three or four LEDs lit up, and then went black, while the battery light changed from orange to red.
no boot, no POST, etc.no harddrive noise.

Maybe Ill keep you posted-any other stories like this out there? Is there any hope?