I have an old Fujtisu Amilo Pro V2065 laptop. About two months ago I plugged in a power adapter that turned out to be faulty (it was the original adapter for that laptop, but the cable was damaged and I didn't notice) and caused a short circuit. The laptop died and I was pretty sure I burned the motherboard, but when I tried a different, working adapter, the computer started fine, to my surprise. Yesterday I wanted to start it using a new adapter I've purchased, and got a nasty surprise - the machine starts, the fans spin, but then the screen goes blank. There's no evidence of anything happening - the HDD LED doesn't blink, so the OS most likely doesn't load. Hard reset didn't help. I've tried attaching an external display, but it just says "no signal".
I've searched around a bit and while there are a lot of questions about this issue, nobody actually hinted towards a faulty motherboard. This is why I'm asking: could that short-circuit actually cause this kind of damage? From my experience this should result in a fried motherboard, rendering the machine unable to start at all. I have some spare parts for that laptop, some old RAM sticks - should I give that a try?