I acquired this Compaq portable in 2003, at the time it had been diagnosed with a non working CRT (display). It has sat in my pile of projects to work on since then.
I've done some basic diagnosing today, and it appears that the non working CRT is indeed the main issue. When turned on it will power up and give one short beep, this signifies a normal boot. I temporarily installed a VGA display card, and it displayed fine, asking for a boot disk (see last photo)
If you have access to a Compaq CRT, or wish to put in a small VGA flatscreen and adapter card this could be an easy fix.