My Second Non-working A1500

[Darrin]

I take it that you've done the obvious like removing all of the extras like that Zorro SCSI card  with the hard drives on it and seeing if it will boot to the "insert floppy" screen with the Kickstart version?

Also, is that a keyboard switchable Kickstart ROM adapter I see there?  I ask because the normal A2000 Kickstart is just one chip.  Try doing a soft-reset with your keyboard and see if you can toggle between the kickstarts.  Failing that, remove the adapter, pull the Kickstart chips off that adapter and try them in the socket one at a time.

[Darrin]

Looking at that kickstartswitch it looks to be soldered right on the motherboard.
As he already tried to yank it out with the board almost coming out and seeing on the photo how low it sits, this could be the case.

God, I hope not!

It is hard to tell looking from that angle, but it does look like there's enough of a gap under that board for it to be plugged into the original Kickstart socket.  I say "plugged", but it soulds like it has been "nailed" in place.  

I'm sure some gentle rocking from either end will work it loose.

Another thought is to switch the ROMs around in their sockets, so that if the primary ROM (which boots first by default) is "dead" then they system can boot from the other one first.

[Darrin]

Sounds like you've tried almost everything, but this YouTube clip migh give you some other ideas on how to deal with troublesome hardware:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv0onXhyLlE