help with running an external monitor

I have the big MBP from about 4 years ago. I use to use it everywhere, home, work, school and transporting it back and forth to class really put a lot of wear and tear on it. The LCD frame ended up snapping 1/4 of the way up. I taped popsicle sticks to the front as braces so I could keep using it. The thickness of the tape ended up stressing the hinges and they broke too. I was propping the screen up against a wall to use it and I guess from opening and closing it so much it cut the wires to the LCD. Now I get NO screen image at all. Im using the hard drive as an external backup to my MBA at the moment, but I would like to use this MBP as base station for everything. I tried hooking up an external monitor i had sitting around, and using the keys to kick it over to external monitor mode, but nothing happened. does anyone have any advice on how I should proceed with this? I would really like to have it as a desktop and hook some externals up to it as a server for my network.