Well, since you already write that you are using 3.0 kickstart ROMs with 3.1, the “mystery” is solved - as Thomas mentioned above, it only works by luck because of a bug, and chances are high that if anything tries to fill up those 8MB of RAM, the system will crash. If you remove one simm, 3.2 kickstarts (and 3.1) will work. An option is to burn custom 3.2 kickstart ROMs with card.resource (iirc) from 3.1.4 kickstart, that miraculously managed to re-introduce the bug from 3.0.  You could also try to install 3.2 kickstarts and the load card.resource from 3.1.4 or 3.0 using LoadModule when you need pcmcia. But with all these “working” solutions, you run the risk of random crashes should something try to actually use all that ram (of which quite a few bytes of address space is pointing to the pcmcia rather than actual ram).

Modern RAM cards typically has reset options to switch between 4 or 8 MB of fast ram, so that we only boot to 4MB when we know we’ll be needing pcmcia. Like on one a600 I got, where I do the opposite, boot with 4MB fast RAM by default and only press ctrl-a-a a liitle extra long to get 8MB just occasionally when needed.

This is the most removed I've ever felt from the Amiga community. I now realize that I have neither the knowledge, nor the equipment (and in some cases, the software) to do pretty much any of the steps you've mentioned in your reply. I never realized getting the PCMCIA slot to work on the 1200 was such an absolute crap shoot, and that it was blind, stupid luck that I got a machine where it just miraculously worked.

As for Workbench 3.2, it's staying off my 1200. I give up. I've had enough. Another $50 that I shouldn't have spent gone right down the crapper. And now that my faulty hard drive is more sensitive than a sunburned back, the last piece of the karma pie is that I'll reformat it, reinstall WB3.1, and have the card slot not work again for literally no reason. But, I'm being defeatist. Tomorrow is another day, and all that.

@PunkTiger

Could you try 3.2 (or 3.2.2) kickstart with one of the 4MB simm modules removed, for “science”?

Now, when you say 3.2 Kickstart, are you asking me to re-install the 3.2 Kickstart roms I have? The same roms that started this whole flaming mess to begin with? Or do you want me to keep the Kickstart 3.0 roms I have and attempt to run Workbench 3.2 on them?

@PunkTiger

Are you by any chance using 3.0 (39.106) kickstart chips with OS 3.1?

Could you try 3.2 (or 3.2.2) kickstart with one of the 4MB simm modules removed, for “science”?

OK... I'm dingbatting 1000 with my A1200. I have a tale to tell. Are you sitting comfortably?

Matt_H: The only things in my A1200 are the Seagate 9144A 60-meg hard drive, and a DKB 1202 RAM expansion with 8 megs RAM, 68881 co-processor and battery-backed clock. Apparently, it won't interfere with the PC slot, according to the link I just supplied.

I got the program you suggested (GrabKickDisk), and during the unarchiving to my Work partition, it encountered a disc error. I acknowledged the error and the computer immediately gurued. I was then thrown into a loop of reboot - Workbench appears - guru - reboot - Workbench appears - guru - wash - rinse - repeat.

Long story made not as long, I managed to get it to boot from floppy, miraculously found an old utility disc that had DiskSalv on it, and let it loose on the hard drive. I got it to the point where the HD will cold boot into Workbench, and maybe will allow me to reboot once, but any reboot after that will do the above loop thing again. During a lucid point, I got the entire HD copied onto a CF card, so at least I have that.

That gave me an idea. I have some CF to laptop IDE converters and a few "professional/industrial" 4 GB CF cards. A match made in heaven! But as it turns out, not quite. The CF converters doesn't seem to want to fully work in the 1200. The drive light is on continuously. I can install the drive, boot from floppy into WB and use the Install disc and HDToolKit to read the card, format it properly, partition it (making sure to save changes to disc), then install 3.1. After a successful installation, I reboot... and the drive doesn't show up. I boot from floppy, get into HDToolKit, have it read the SCSI bus, and at that point, the drives show up on Workbench. Well, that's A) annoying, and B) not going to work.

So NOW I'm faced with the decision of whether or not I format the original hard drive, remap the bad blocks, install 3.1 on it and then migrate the rest of the HD from the CF card just so I can HOPEFULLY get a stable system again. Then decide whether or not I give enough of a leaping yahoo to "upgrade" to 3.2 after all this rigamarole.

Y'know, all this puts up a convincing argument to just leave well enough alone.

EDIT: I might as well ask here. How can I modify a COPY of my WB3.1 floppy to allow me to use the PCMCIA slot? The thought crossed my mind, but I forgot the reason why.

Sounds like the A1200 has a ram expansion card with more than 4MB RAM?