MacBook Core Duo (2 of them) won't boot at all

So I found some old MacBook Core Duos laying around, and I thought I'd convert them into CloudReady "Chromebooks"

After installing CloudReady (without rEFIt) on one of them, and booting to Kubuntu using a special EFI software on the other one, both of them do not sound a startup chime, even though both laptops' hard drives, CD slots, and fans are running.

I tried the "place your laptop under a lot of blankets and pillows" trick, and let one run for 80 minutes, and that didn't help the cause. I can't seem to determine what's causing the issue.

On the other hand, a black MacBook Core Duo from 2006, with a Core Duo I remind you, without rEFIt, installed the software perfectly, without a single hitch. It boots into CloudReady perfectly.

I've tried many steps to troubleshoot the two, including RAM resets, hard drive resets, PRAM/SMC resets, whatever I can. I'd extremely doubt this is a logic board problem, since they just stop working after booting/installing a different OS.