baked Alien: initial testing after high heat exposure

[808dude]

My nearly-new Alienware R4 was exposed to high heat for an hour in a stupid accident - maybe 200F or so. On disassembly, I see little to no obvious effect on PC boards, though virtually all of the plastic housing components are warped and slumped in one way or another - keycaps, touch-pad, bezel, etc. Before I spend a dime sending it off for diagnosis/repair, I'd like to verify whether it will boot up.
So my questions:
a) The battery-pack connector isn't just a simple two-wire affair, so I don't know what I should test for at those pins to see if there's any life there (I don't have it here but I seem to recall there are at least four pins). Anyone got any info on this?
b) The PS was undamaged (not exposed to heat). Can I meaningfully test the remains of the R4 if I just keep the battery disconnected, and see what happens when I try to boot up? Or will the PC not even try unless there's a battery connected?

Thanks for any added hints on testing.

 

[TJ Hooker]

You should not have any issue using the power supply to power the laptop without a battery attached (assuming the laptop is still functional obviously).

How many cells is your battery? E.g. 6 cell, 8 cell, etc. That would allow you to get a rough idea of what voltage it should be. If you have a multimeter, you could just measure the voltage across each combination of two pins to see if one of them is about the correct voltage.

 

[808dude]

Thanks, I just tried to look up the specs but can't determine which battery it shipped with. I did, however, see that the op range for the battery peaks out at 90F, so I tend to think I toasted it beyond usability. I'll still poke my DVM leads around to see what I get. Apparently it's supposed to be either 15.2V or 11.4V, depending on the pack it shipped with. More usefully, I'll see what the system does with only the PS connected.

The power-switch might be the only ruined component if my luck changes (it had the 'alien' plastic dress-up logo on it, which melted into the switch below, and then broke the switch when I was attempting to get the case open). I'm figuring I can jumper it momentarily to check for signs of life...