BIOS Recovery Question

I bought an acer laptop of unknown history.
Acer E1-510-4828
Has no HD.
Shipped with windows 8.1
Apparently UEFI BIOS.
4GB PC3L ram.

I put a linux boot CD in it and applied power.
Draws 25W. Assume it's charging the battery, but the
charge indicator is not lit. The battery has gone from
not working to running the laptop, so looks like it's
actually charging.

Press the power button.
Fans run
CD spins up
No light on the screen.
Nothing on the VGA external monitor
Pressing the function F5/F6 keys does nothing.
Runs for about 5 seconds and restarts over and over.

If I remove the RAM, it powers up and the fans run
continuously.
Replacing the RAM doesn't help.

My conclusion is that the system is trying to run,
but the BIOS is borked.

I had the same system with a Gateway desktop with an
Acer board. I could get into the BIOS.
I installed win 8.1.
Win 8.1 seemed to install and run fine, but the
first reboot didn't.
Same symptom as above. Nothing on screen.
Can't enter bios. reboot loop.

Almost all the google hits about bios tell you how to
update/reinstall/recover using methods that require the system
to at least boot into bios.

I have two UEFI systems and both are borked.

I did find some info about recovery mode or crisis mode
or insyde, but they're vague about exactly what to do.
Vendors are vague about which systems support USB
BIOS recovery.

I did try recovery via flash drive and some multiple
keypresses on the Gateway with no success.
Couldn't even get the lights on the flash drive to blink.
Symptoms suggest the boot block is trashed.

There are a LOT of variables on the bios file formats
and file names and keypresses required to initiate
the USB recovery process.

Since I can't see what I have, I'm lost.
Any ideas on where to go from here?