Damaged MBP won't boot from FireWire

[Mike¬]

I'm trying to get a friend's MBP to boot. It was dropped and the HD most likely is wrecked. But the casing and the screen are OK and it turns on to grey screen and chimes.
Now. I can't get it to boot from an external FW disk by holding option.
It won't even show me the selector.

Any other ideas of how to check whether it will work after replacing the HD???

 

[case2001]

Unfortunately,

It sounds more complicated than a crashed hard drive. You should still be able to boot from firewire even if the hard drive is toast. If the drive is toast you should have a folder on the screen with a folder and a question mark.

Have you tried connecting it to an external monitor to make see what happens?