Awesome news! I got it to work! I tried restoring BIOS settings by removing the battery yesterday and it didn't work but then I left the battery out all night and now it works, so it was a BIOS issue, it seems.
Only it still doesn't work with the new RAM, so my friend is still coming tomorrow and we'll be trying to figure it out, maybe a BIOS update will help, but it's definitely not dead! Hurray!