Q950 Hard Drive & External Drive

Newbie dropping by for help. Apologies if I'm in the wrong section.
I have an elderly Q950 with an external hard drive with everything backed up onto it. The external drive is a Micronet ADV1000E, with a sticker on the back saying it's Macintosh or PC compatible. I also have an iBook laptop, & PC Dell Inspiron 1300 laptop. As I have the 2 laptops, the Quadra hadn't been switched on for maybe one year. On the weekend I tried to get it to boot up (with & without the external drive switched on), but all it does is display a grey screen with an image of a 3.5" disk with a '?' in the middle. If I start up from a Norton 3.5" disk it still can't find the external or internal drive. If I try booting up with my finger in the shift key it doesn't want to know.
So, my questions:
1. Any idea why the Quadra isn't seeing either the external or internal drive & what can I try to do?
2. Is there any way I can connect my external drive to either my iBook or Dell? At the moment I have no cables to connect the old & new - are cables available & if so any idea where from? I've looked high & low but so far no joy.
3. Is it possible to remove the hard drive from the Quadra or the external drive & put in an external drive enclosure, then connect that to either laptop? I see there are drive enclosures available which are Mac & pc compatible. This by the way would be a major undertaking for me. I'm by no means a computer dunce but would be wary of trying it.

Thanks,

Janet.