Issues with startup

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I'm confused by this thread, as well. Would you like to go back to using your original hard drive? What happened that you were no longer able to boot from it? Did you receive any error messages? Most likely it's just something in your Startup-Sequence or WBStartup directory that was causing it to not boot.  Either a bad command, incompatible program, or something along those lines.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

SetPatch does a lot of different things.  These other guys are going to give you better advice, but in the meantime what if you try just commenting it out?  Put a semi-colon before that line in your Startup-Sequence.  Does it boot then?  You probably won't have AGA screenmodes, but just as a test.  Then you can narrow it down to more specific components of SetPatch.

Try taking "Quiet" out of it, maybe?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

How do I run SetPatch ? I'm in the shell window now
Sorry if I'm not up to speed on this as it's been years since I did any stuff in this area of the Amiga

Just type setpatch ? into the shell. You've probably figured that out by now, already. Be prepared to hit Ctrl+C to break out of it, unless you actually want to run it.

If you go ahead and run it without the QUIET option, it will show you a list of everything it's patching (although obviously in this case, it might crash).

It might also help to type version c:setpatch to know what version you're running.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I don't know if it will help at all, but I have SetPatch 44.38 on my system.  Shoot me your email address and I'll send you a copy to try.  You're going to want to rename your old one as "setpatch.old" or something, first, so you don't overwrite it.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

PM sent

Where is the SetPatch file stored so I can edit the name.

There you go, just sent you two versions. 44.38 and 44.39.  I don't remember what 44.39 was, I think it had a slight modification to support a newer graphics.library, or something, but for some reason I was still using 44.38 and my system is 100% stable. Your mileage may vary.

SetPatch is stored in SYS:C directory

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Drat.  SetPatch is trying to activate something that is not working.  Wait, this is in a 4000?  I vaguely, vaguely seem to recall someone else having a similar problem a few years ago.  Their system was crashing at SetPatch.  That's because SetPatch was trying to activate the AGA graphics routines, and something in the chipset on their motherboard had failed.  The system worked, just not "the AGA part".  This seems probable for you, as well.  It's unlikely the command itself is bad, what whatever component it's trying to activate has issues.

Afraid I'm not going to be of much help beyond this, try searching the forums or wait for someone else to come along who can help you fine-tune the SetPatch command to see where it's failing?

One last thought - try removing all expansion cards and see if that makes a difference?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Yup, it's a 4000d
I'll give that a try I guess. Worst case I try doing a full reinstall on a new hard drive and transfer over the files after.
Thanks so much for trying

You can try it, but I think you might have a hardware problem.  Try this again, hold down both mouse buttons to boot with no startup-sequence, and execute nothing but the SetPatch command.  You get a crash then?  I don't know if a "full reinstall" is going to help you.  Here's a screenshot of mine, you can see SetPatch touches on a lot of different hardware registers:

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Try these alternate ways of running SetPatch listed in post #2 and #3 of this thread:

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=23107

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Also try C:SetPatch NOAGA

Edit: just saw your earlier note.  Did you try your "SetPatch-old" file?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Last dumb question - you mentioned this system has been in storage for a while.  Was there any battery leakage?  Has battery been removed already?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Is your ROM 3.1?

Here's one more to try.  Couldn't hurt, right?  http://aminet.net/package/util/boot/SetPatch_43.6b

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

It can hurt. Version 43 and below don't load the ROM update.

I just saw he's using 3.1.  3.1 didn't have a ROM update, AFAIR?

Either way, there's no reason I can think of why a freshly powered on system with no Startup-Sequence is locking up as soon as he types SetPatch.  Is there a way to get verbose output from SetPatch to see at what point it's freezing?

By my count he's tried four different versions of SetPatch now, all with the same outcome.  This on a system that was previously working fine, before being put into storage for a period of time.  I've been throwing different versions of SetPatch out there, but what I really think is there's a hardware problem that needs further troubleshooting.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I have 3.1 roms installed
Its an 040 board and given it boots up into windows if I disable setpatch that says the 040 is working right?

SetPatch enables certain features of the 040, so no, not necessarily.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Hummm, okay.  You mentioned before you were able to boot to Workbench normally with a floppy disk, correct?  Try booting off your HD, but hold down both mouse buttons and do "No Startup-Sequence".  Then put the floppy disk in the drive and try running just the SetPatch off the floppy disk (cd to DF0:C directory).  Does that work?  What version is on the disk?

What version of the OS were you booting off with this disk, BTW?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Im booting OS 3.1 on the hard drive.

 I mean when you boot off a floppy disk.  Didn't you say previously that you were able to boot off a floppy disk without issues?  What version is this disk, and have you tried running just the SetPatch command off of it?
 

I had a thought, could my Indivision AGA have gone bad or become disconnected off the chip somehow and that cause this issue? Its buried behind the Mediator board so hard to look at unless I remove it and all the Toaster cards.

Sounds like you've got a lot of stuff going on with this system.  Indivision is one of the few pieces which isn't "touched" by SetPatch, since it should be transparent to the system at this level.  In other words, possible but not likely.  I'd try removing all the cards, reseat the processor card, check for bad or leaky caps, and try booting with just a base configuration without all the add-ons.  If it boots normally without them, add the boards back one-by-one until the problem reoccurs.  If you're lucky it's just a loose processor board or something along those lines.  Very common problem in A4000's.