Ok so I didn't understand the 'reply' feature and thought it would be placed under the relevant post
This is the only thing that worked for me - See Balu889's steps to remove the battery and charge it directly to solve the following. If the phone vibrates when you plug it in, then the screen comes on and dies following by it vibrating again, screen coming on and then dying over and over and over then following these steps is the only thing that's likely to work.
Reason being is that the battery is 100% flat. Plugging in the charging cable gets you enough juice to vibrate the unit, turn the screen on and probably NOT enough to switch the logic on where whatever power management can deal with charging the battery while connected through the handset.
Balu889's fix involves charging the battery just enough directly to get over this hurdle then it's business as usual. It's not elegant and you have to take the case off the back but it is effective.
Make sure you don't let the bare wires in the (hacked up) USB cable touch each other when the power is on!