The 5xx series PS does get good and toasty in my experience. Not sure about the ram, as I have never checked. I can't see what effect a ram disk would have on its operating temperature, though, all the same. Is the heatsink for the 68LC040 in place?
You obviously need a hard drive to get the benefit of the machine. If you really wanted to go to town, take a peek at the "Power Monster" scsi-CF card converter being sold from Japan on eBay. Or you could just buy a used netbook for much the same price....
Batteries, for their part, are notoriously finicky on the 540c, but there are some utilities that make reviving them possible: do a search of the fora and you will find what you need to look for. Someone can LEGALLY send you the three options, in fact, as they were freeware. My battery was genuinely toast, so I repacked with tabbed AA cells, but if doing it again I would just use 10 x 1000mA NiMh AAA cells in standard Radio Shack battery holders/trays, recycling the fuses etc. in the arrangement as needed. It might just work, and you'd be able to say, "Look, Ma, (almost) no soldering!" I don't think you get the benefit of higher capacity NiMhs in these old machines, frankly.
I have taken to cracking my old battery plastics apart with careful use of a broad chisel, smacked lightly with a wooden carving mallet. This approach may not be for the timerous, but I have pretty good amateur woodworking skills, and these are happily transferable to the problem in hand. I can get a battery pack open in under a minute this way, which is a damn sight better than the hour or so it can take with a utility knife, and a great deal less hazardous to the hands. (What klutz thought of that method and posted it on the web?)
Anyway, best of luck with it. As I say, there are a few others around who are more knowledgeable than I am and who can help. They have, however, become irregular visitors of late, as the fora can at times be rather juvenile — and that gets a bit wearing to those of us who are getting older.
You obviously need a hard drive to get the benefit of the machine. If you really wanted to go to town, take a peek at the "Power Monster" scsi-CF card converter being sold from Japan on eBay. Or you could just buy a used netbook for much the same price....
Batteries, for their part, are notoriously finicky on the 540c, but there are some utilities that make reviving them possible: do a search of the fora and you will find what you need to look for. Someone can LEGALLY send you the three options, in fact, as they were freeware. My battery was genuinely toast, so I repacked with tabbed AA cells, but if doing it again I would just use 10 x 1000mA NiMh AAA cells in standard Radio Shack battery holders/trays, recycling the fuses etc. in the arrangement as needed. It might just work, and you'd be able to say, "Look, Ma, (almost) no soldering!" I don't think you get the benefit of higher capacity NiMhs in these old machines, frankly.
I have taken to cracking my old battery plastics apart with careful use of a broad chisel, smacked lightly with a wooden carving mallet. This approach may not be for the timerous, but I have pretty good amateur woodworking skills, and these are happily transferable to the problem in hand. I can get a battery pack open in under a minute this way, which is a damn sight better than the hour or so it can take with a utility knife, and a great deal less hazardous to the hands. (What klutz thought of that method and posted it on the web?)
Anyway, best of luck with it. As I say, there are a few others around who are more knowledgeable than I am and who can help. They have, however, become irregular visitors of late, as the fora can at times be rather juvenile — and that gets a bit wearing to those of us who are getting older.