Amiga 4000 won't boot [Solved]

[gdanko]

I picked up an A4000 Friday afternoon. It i an 040/25 model and also came with a Phase 5 Fastlane Z3. There are 3.0 ROMs in the system.

It won't boot. When I turn it on the monitor flickers for a moment and goes to a really light gray then stays that way. Here are the steps I tried:

* Re-seated the ROMs
* Re-seated the daugher card
* Tried a new daughter card
* Re-seated the processor card (3640 rev 3.1)
* Tried an 030 processor card

Nothing seems to work. There wasn't a tremendous amount of battery leakage.. and I did remove the battery.

Any ideas?

[stopthegop]

Try different ROMS if you have them.  Check the motherboard jumper with labeled "int/ext": should be set to "ext" with a 3640 card.  Look for signs of corrosion around the pins of the floppy and IDE connectors on the MB, especially if you live near salt water.  Examine the motherboard closely through a bright light and look for any signs of excessive heat (burnt runs, ICs, etc.).  Try booting with the HD, IDE cable and expansion cards removed.  How does the power supply look?  Is it outputting correct voltages?  Check for shorts?  Try using a different floppy drive and cable.  Try it without the daughter card (I'm pretty sure an A4000 can boot w/ out it?).  Use a meter and check the voltages at test point on the MB.  Did I mention try another PSU?  Thats all I can think of at the moment.  Good luck..    

[gdanko]

I have another set of ROMs but they're in my current A4000 desktop. I have a 4000T but it's brand new so I'd rather not dismantle it. Do the 1200 ROMs work in a 4000D? If so can try some of those since I have a set of 1200 3.1s.

I tried to boot w/o any cables, only the CPU card and daughtercard were installed.

I actually tried another PSU. I have a 3rd 4000D case that only has the PSU.

I am wondering what else it could be. Oh yeah, the jumpers were both set to ext.

[TjLaZer]

There wasn't a tremendous amount of battery leakage.. and I did remove the battery.

Ah see the A4000 will suffer with minute amounts of battery leakage due to the location of the battery, unlike the flagship A2000 series computers from Commodore.    There could be lots of leakage on those and everything will work fine. lol

Seriously, it seems some traces have been corroded, I bet the RAM Simm area.  Check it out.  Usually it's the RTC that fails, but the SIMM sockets are next.  I had 2 A4000's with very little leakage and the RTC was dead.  Both worked fine otherwise but I did observe how close the Simms were to  being damaged.

And A4000T and A1200 ROMs will NOT work in a A4000 desktop.  Only A4000D ROMs will work

[gdanko]

Okay I will check the SIMM slots too. What should I look for in each area?

[gdanko]

Success!
It must a been a combination of trial and error because it now boots!
It DOES take 33-35 seconds from the moment I hit the power button until it gets to the "please insert a disk" screen.

Two major changes I made:
1) The DF0 jumper was set to external. I set it to internal.
2) I replaced the floppy cable.

I did try another 3640 card but to be honest I went back and forth so many times I cannot remember which one finally worked. I also swapped a couple of daughter cards back and forth.

Regardless, it works!

By the way, is 35 seconds too long of a delay in going from power on to Kickstart screen?
Gary

[adolescent]

gdanko wrote:

By the way, is 35 seconds too long of a delay in going from power on to Kickstart screen?

No, that's normal for Kickstart 3.1.  The extra delay was added to accomodate slow starting drives.

[motorollin]

Three A4000s? Do you really need all of them? Can I have one? :-)

Actually, I am looking for an A4000 desktop case. Would you be prepared to part with your empty case?

--
moto

[gdanko]

As a trade, yes. However there is a bit of yellowing on the fascia.

[gdanko]

I don't NEED all of them but I WANT all of them.

[orange]

I had a lot of problems with that first CHIP RAM SIMM socket, the plastic thingy was broken and A4000 would constantly give green (sometimes yellow or black) screen. So I guess its important to check that for bad contact.

[gdanko]

A pencil eracer woprks great for cleaning simms/dimms.

[TjLaZer]

I have four A4000's and all look minty!  Three are 040's and one is a 030 (even says 030 on the fascia)  But one needs to have RTC fixed, other than this all work fine.  I just love the A4000 series computers, I think they are the flagship computer from Commodore.

[rockape]

Hi,

"By the way, is 35 seconds too long of a delay in going from power on to Kickstart screen?"

From Warren Blocks web Page.

See:  http://wonkity.com/~wblock/a4000hard/speedide.html

"Even when an A4000 is configured without one, the system will still look for an IDE hard drive on power-up or reset. To allow IDE drives time to spin up, there is a long search built into the 3.0 ROMs, and an even longer one in the 3.1 ROMs (about 30 seconds). A BattMem bit to disable the extra delay with 3.1 ROMs has been reported and finally confirmed, but it enables or disables an additional eight seconds of the wait, and defaults to off. With software, it is possible to remove the delay between resets, but not on power-up (Matthew Frost's "NoIDE" program is available from the disk/misc directory of Aminet).

The only currently-known way to completely disable this delay is by obtaining a small piece of hardware (the circuit is courtesy of Sean Riddle; the instructions are mine, so errors are entirely my fault). With this "IDE ignorer," the search for IDE drives is skipped altogether.  You can follow the instructions here to build one, or buy a prebuilt version from Redmond Cable (part number is "40socket-term"). "

I hope this helps.

Kind regards, Michael.

aka rockape