Did you completely disconnect the battery at least once? (Sorry, I don't have personal experience with this, and maybe this is so obvious that you did that already. However, a call center job some years ago told me that you can save a lot of time by always ask such questions :-P)
Aside from that, the option left is probably to connect a serial console and look if something's going on. However, there might not be a single spark of action. The battery is first connected to a charging/power controller chip, I think. Basic charging won't tell us if the SoC is still alive and kicking....
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