2 iMacs 2 Problems

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Hello all. I just recently acquired two imacs (27 and 21.5) at an auction. Neither of these iMacs currently have hard drives in them, but I attempted booting the snow leopard install dvd on both machines (just to test them out). Upon doing so I was unable to see anything (black screen from the beginning) but both macs chimed (as expected). So, I plugged in an old lcd into each of them and turned them on and loaded the install disk on both of them successfully (on the external lcd albeit). Also, I tried turning them on with the external lcd without the disk and a white screen with a grey folder with a question mark appeared (which I assuming is because of a lack of boot devices?). I am kind of lost as to what to do next, I really do not want to have to take it to an apple store and pay an exorbitant price, since I am somewhat comfortable repairing computers and there are numerous youtube tutorials for repairing imacs, but I do not know what is wrong with them or how to diagnose the problem. I have reset SMC on both, and I have taken the ram out and put it back in both of them. So what do you all think- Display?? I am (with my limited knowledge) guessing it is not the graphics card since I was able to run an external monitor. If anyone has any suggestions as to what may be the cause, and/or how I should go about fixing it, your help will be greatly appreciated.
 
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Blue Mountains NSW Australia
Your Mac's Specs
Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
G'day and welcome to the forums.

Sounds like the optical drives may well be fried also. Be aware whenever purchasing used machines with no hard drive, it is often the case they are being sold as parts only at auction sales.
 
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J
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Well, this is one bit of info I forgot to mention. The lack of hard drive was not unexpected. It was a government auction (post office) and by law (apparently) the workers are required to remove hard drives to protect data. The iMacs were part of a "used" computer lot as opposed to a salvageable computer part lot, so I was quite hopeful.. I doubt that it is the fault of the optical drive, (i failed to mention early and have since edited my post), because I also turned the imacs on without the sl disk and a white screen with a grey folder with a question mark loaded following the mac "chime". I assume this was because the imacs had nothing to boot into..
 
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Your Mac's Specs
*27" imac C2D 3.0/1TB/16GB**Mac Pro Octo 2.8/4x1TB/16GB**Mac Pro Quad 2.66/2x1TB/8GB**iPhone 4*
Be sure screen cable is plugged into logic and inverter cables are connected
Install Hd's and run OS X install.
Best regards
 

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