Mbreuer, Sanosuke and wdwright,
Thank you for your collective suggestions and recommendations. Here's the picture:

When it successfully booted once, the peripherals I connected were a mouse (non-USB), keyboard (non-USB), and LCD monitor (non-USA). No USB port was used at that instant. But I could not boot with success without any change of the above.
Under normal condition, I have one HP Office Jet multi-function printer (again non-USB) and 1 biz-card scanner (USB port used) and a network adopter (external WiFi, USB port used)
On the issue of power supply, I have a 400W supply.

New development: I put in a new battery and that did not change anything. System never gets past the BIOS phase.

At this point, if nothing simple can resurrect the system (I don’t want to mess with the power supply), I incline to remove the hard drive and put it on another system as suggested.

If possible, let me hear from you again before I close this thread.