A4000 in a tower issues

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I did the "hold both mouse buttons down" trick and I do get the boot options screen. If I also boot from a workbench disk i do get access to the other drive I have on board. I can hear both drives spin up.

So if I understand correctly, if you boot from a Workbench disk you're able to boot normally?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

If it boots and works normally off of a floppy disk, then your problem is probably somewhere in the software on your boot drive, or that the boot drive has become faulty over time. Can you boot with no startup-sequence (by holding down both mouse buttons) and accessing DH0: that way?
 
 Edit: just saw your other comment about the OS drive not showing up.  Have you checked all the cables to it?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

so a dead drive I guess? now comes the fun part. finding an IDE drive LOL

Sounds like.  It happens.  I got frustrated and stopped using Amiga's for almost 10 years when all of my hard drives died at the same time in early 2003, taking with them my entire software collection from the '90s.    Any chance of testing the drive in another Amiga, or through WinUAE?  That's one way to make 100% sure.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Has anyone tried a Solid state drive in their Amiga?
Is there a sata > IDE adapter?

I believe there are several people on this forum that use them.  Either through SCSI->SATA bridges or some other kind of complicated chain of SCSI->IDE->SATA bridge, etc.  I've even seen a few IDE (PATA) SSD drives for sale, Newegg.com lists several of them but they're not cheap.  IMHO a CF adapter is the easiest way to go.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Good plan.