...and it just gets better.

[B00tDisk]

Strip it down to nothing.  Motherboard, native chipset, no additional RAM, zip.

Assuming it will run in a stable fashion like this, start reconnecting components, one at a time.  Start with the simple gear first - trapdoor acellerator card 1st, and work outward from there.  

[B00tDisk]

XDelusion wrote:
Been through all that.

Here is my new find. If I make one 1gb partition and move it all the way to the end of the drive, reboot, then try to format it, it just exits the format screen right away!

Have you gone the re-seat chips route?

I got an A1200 back from UPS years ago (long, long story) and the internal HD had come loose and smacked things around pretty badly.  Once I got it unpacked and reseated everything inside it worked flawlessly.

[B00tDisk]

XDelusion wrote:
yep, infact I just installed 3.1 kickstarts in here, but it was doing the same thing before the Kickstart upgrade.

Okay then.  It isn't a bad chip connection.  I'm assuming that since you said "I've been down that route" in regards to stripping the system to the motherboard and working up and out, that the lockups happened when it was just a bare board?  Or no?