Dead A4000/040

[smerf]

Hi,

@elpiloto,

Just pulled my A4000 with O40 card out of the Attic, had
the same probem as you have, first thing is check your ide
cable and make sure it is not intermittent, make sure it is
totally plugged in at both ends, check your floppy disk
cables make sure both are tight and then finally check your
CPU 040 card. Press down on it a couple of times and make
sure it is will seated. My old Amiga had an intermittent
ide cable, and a floppy drive cable that was only half way
plugged in. Try CNTRL AMIGA AMIGA does the lights flash
and does it look like its trying to reboot.

Are your JUMPERS correct for an 040 card?

Next thing is do you have a SCSI card in one of the slots?

If you do remove it, because this produces a 30 sec to a
minute delay before the system actuates.

How old is your battery, mine when I first turned it on
after sitting unused for two years, was completely dead, it
took almost 8 hours to get enough charge to actuate the
OS chips so the computer knew what to do on boot up, but
I knew this because my Amiga 4000 always had this problem
when I didn't use it, I solved this problem by going to
Wal-Mart and bought a new 3.6VDC phone battery and put it
in, and yes hillary a 3.6VDC battery works better than that
little piece of junk that came with the Amiga, just get an
old phone, cut the plug off, carefully remove the battery,
leaving the two thin ends still soldered to the board,
solder the plug that you cut out of the old phone to the
two thin tabs you left in observing polarity, and plug in
the phone battery into the plug you removed from the old
phone.

Summary:

Check Floppy disk cable
Check IDE cable
Check Battery
Check Jumpers
Press down or reseat CPU card.

If that don't work, sell me the Amiga 4000 for spare parts.

Good Luck, hope my suggestions work, it will be great to
hear that another Amiga 4000 was saved from scrap heap.

smerf

[smerf]

Hi,

Yes the battery does keep track of the clock, but I also
believe that it gives the Amiga 4000 the voltage to actuate
the OS chips (bios). I know when I took out my old batt,
that my Amiga would not boot up. I have the Amiga 4000
schematics on a cd somewhere in my 12 boxes of Amiga junk,
will have to go up in the attic and see if I can find them.

I could be totally wrong about the Amiga's Battery, but it
seemed that my A4000 with the old Battery in there wouldn't
boot up until the battery picked up enough charge to tell
the OS chips what it was. Like I said its been 2 years since
I played with my Amiga's, now that my Amiga 4000 is working
again, I am getting back the old feeling of why I liked it
so much. It is not Bill Gatesorized. It is actually fun to
use, not like VISTA where I have had to actuate it seven
times because of changes made in my computer. I gave up on
VISTA and went back to XP when it asked for the eight
activation, I figured microscrew has to much control over
your system with VISTA and I refuse to use it, I am now
using Ubuntu as my main OS, XP for games, and WinUAE for
my Amiga stuff. My A4000 is used sparingly for my Amiga disk
collection.

Well good Luck, I can only tell you what problems my Amiga
4000 had when I first tried it, by the way since I replaced
the battery, I have had no problems with my Amiga booting
up in 10 seconds or less, but when I put one of my SCSI
cards in it, it takes about 30 seconds to boot up.

smerf