@ Mark
Well written! It agrees with my training, too. Everyone tells themselves that "..just this once I wont bother with a wrist strap..". Then, when the machine fails unexpectedly in the future, they say it simply wore out. Good reminder.
@ eslapion
It's not clear. Did you put the original roms back in and it still won't come up? It seems I was told by several venders (years ago when we had vendors to choose from) that A3000s had more than 1 pin-out configuration (motherboard revisions) for the rom sockets. My first 3000 even had a rom tower that was very strange.
Also, whenever I open my A3000, I usually have to re-seat the Zorro daughter board several times before it will reboot. When I finally get it booting again, I very carefully replace the top cover.