hey,
do what the dealers were told to do with A500s.
drop the unit, still in it's box, from 6 to 8 inches onto a hard flat surface. resets the chips... :-D
Did you pull and reset the socketed chips?
Did you test the Power Supply with a volt meter?
If the unit boots with out a HD and doesn't with one, then maybe the PS has some issues. Did ya try powering the drive without the scsi cable attached?
I'd install a battery into the MB despite what others say about not needing one.
I'm having external scsi issues with my A3000. Random scsi lockups and occasional checksum errors and no boot or even getting to the early start-up screen. When I unhook the external units and terminate the external scsi port, it boots and runs fine. So far I have to leave the scanner out of the external chain of ZIP drive and CDrom. Still gets some random scsi lockups, but no where near the problem when all three external units are in place.
Good luck.
