Amiga 4000T boot problem

[HammerD]

I have a 3 week old Amiga 4000T (Escom model) purchased from Software hut that is having trouble booting.  It is a stock A4000T/040.  I have just added an IDE hard disk and IDE CDROM, and bumped the ram up to 18MB (2+16).

When I power on the A4000T the power LED flickers about 4 times bright then light, then I get a black screen with a red box "SOFTWARE ERROR", - the red box flashes.  I then click the left mouse button and then the machine proceeds to boot normally into OS 3.9.  There is a C= 2065 ethernet card also in the machine (which works with Genesi), and otherwise there are no problems with the machine when I am using the Workbench.  All the ram is identified, I can see the CDROM and hard drive...everything works.

Only when I power it on from cold start do I get the problem.  Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

[HammerD]

@X-Ray

I will take out the ide disk and let you know if I still get the crash....what if I don't ? ?

[HammerD]

@All:

Ok, I did some more testing, and the A4000T only gets that problem when my 20 gig IDE hard disk is plugged into the machine via the IDE cable...is my hard drive incompatible??

I tried both 80-pin and 40-pin IDE cables (no difference)... or is there some jumper I can adjust somewhere?  The hard disk is a Maxtor 541DX 5400 rpm 20 gig drive.

[HammerD]

@Me

Ok I take that back. I have tried 3 hard drives now and all get the "Software Failure" red rectangle...

Hooking up just a CDROM drive as a master device (only device) on the cable was ok, no problem, and of course taking off the IDE cable it boots up to a purple "insert disk" screen...

[HammerD]

I guess it has pretty much happened from day 1.  If I put my cyberstorm 060 with a scsi disk in the machine the problem doesn't happen.

It ONLY happens when an IDE disk is attached to the onboard ide connector...an IDE CDROM is fine.

Weird...

[HammerD]

Hmm, interesting that yours does the same thing...I guess there is nothing really that can be done.  I mean the machine works fine, I just get that error but it eventually boots without any intervention.

Or I could just use scsi...

[HammerD]

@adolescent

I had never heard that before. I even owned an Escom A4000T back in 1997 - but I guess I always used SCSI with it then.  I just don't happen to have any 50 pin scsi drives kicking around; otherwise I would use scsi :-)

So I am stuck with IDE for the moment (god it's slow

At least I know I'm not the "only one" with this issue, and that it really isn't that serious; just annoying.

Thanks for posting the info.

[HammerD]

@ adolescent

Interesting idea. I never knew this type of product existed.  What exact model number do you have, and do you know if one is also avilable for the built in A4000T scsi connector?  (is that 10MB/sec ? or only 5 ?)

Thanks!