Problem with starting A4000

[quenthal]

Hmm.. every once in a while, when I start my Amiga 4000 it doesn't start completely - ie. requires ctrl-a-a to finish booting. I can see that power led doesn't blink as it usually does (maybe 2 times quickly) and floppy drive stays quiet. In working boot floppy drive makes two crunchy clicks before noclick kicks in. This doesn't happen always though.

I'm using custom rom in kickflash, and thoughtthat newest ram-handler publicly available caused this. I removed that, and it seems that it reduced his symptom, but I didn't get rid of that completely as now can be seen. As Mirage-tower's powerbutton is slightly sensitive, maybe that can be the reason too.

Does anyone else have this problem, and what do you think is reason and how to fix it? What does the powerled -blinking mean, does my a4k reboot everytime it blinks because some sort of malfunction or rom-image or what? Is this blinking normal? Haven't really thought about it before.

UPDATE - I'm now quite sure that the problem is not with bad contact between mb and turbo.

[quenthal]

Here is the visible part of how my amiga boots up:

When it starts just fine:
I press power button, dim powerled, bright powerled, dim powerled, bright powerled, fdd click, fdd click, workbench-screen show up

When it requires manual ctrl-a-a to finish booting:
I press power button, dim powerled, bright powerled - nothing (I can't test right now, but rtg-screen stays without signal and if I remember correctly, screen stays plain grey in native output) - I notice there is something wrong - ctrl-a-a - dim powerled - bright powerled - fdd click - fdd click - workbench

[motorollin]

IIRC a light grey screen means a chip or the 680x0 is not seated correctly. Give each socketed chip a firm push to make sure it is seated properly, and remove and reinsert your CPU card.

--
moto

[Amigaz]

What hardware do you have inside your A4000?

Also have a Mirage 4000 pro but my power light doesn't blink like you describe.
Also using a custom kickromfile with BlizKick

My power light:

Press to start computer: first it's dim for a sec or two then bringht for approx 20-30 sec while searching for IDE units then it boots and BlizKick kicks my kickrom fil and the powerlight is again dim for a sec or two then my A4000 boots much fast because the BlizKick module no_ide is active and disables my IDE

[quenthal]

@AMIGAZ

Thanks! What you just said tells me that my hw works in this aspect as it should. When I described it as blinking, that was slightly incorrect - this is how it is compared to your description:

1) first it's dim for a sec or two - same here

2) then bright for approx 20-30 sec while searching for IDE - this lasts about 1 sec for me, but that's probably because I've kickrom without scsi.device kicked from Kickflash-card

3) powerlight is again dim for a sec or two - same here

4) bright led, wb boots up

The problem I had was that the power led didn't go dim that second time at all, and machine didn't finish booting.
I checked that chips and turbo were correctly seated and I've to see if this happens again. However, the fact that ctrl-a-a help to finish the boot indicates IMO that the problem is not with bad connection - there probably is some problems with kickflash/kickrom-image or modules in it since that ram-handler made it worse.


EDIT: just thinking aloud - but if that is the case, why doesn't it require ctrl-a-a everytime I start my computer? Is there anyway for me to log what is happening during booting while powerled's brightness changes?

[TjLaZer]

I think the problem might be a CPU card not getting a good connection.  One of my A4000's also does this too.

[motorollin]

quenthal wrote:
However, the fact that ctrl-a-a help to finish the boot indicates IMO that the problem is not with bad connection

...

but if that is the case, why doesn't it require ctrl-a-a everytime I start my computer?

Maybe there is a bad connection, but once the Amiga has been on long enough for you to realise that it is not going to boot, the offending component has heated up enough to expand and make the connection better. When you reboot the machine it then starts up normally.

quenthal wrote:
Is there anyway for me to log what is happening during booting while powerled's brightness changes?

No. The grey screen is the only output you will get from the Amiga until Kickstart has completed.

--
moto

[quenthal]

Any recommendations how to fix connection more permanently? Could contact cleaners like CRC help?

Btw., to completely different matter. As there easily is crashes when using multiple patches over patches, is there any good diagnostics software to test memory, 68060 and ppc. When stressing the system with "normal software" with all these patches, there is always a chance that possible crash is sw-problem, not hw one. So real diagnostics would put ease on my mind and tell me that there is no problem with hw or some of the crashes is infact caused by ppc settings or faulty hw.

[Amigaz]

quenthal wrote:
Any recommendations how to fix connection more permanently? Could contact cleaners like CRC help?

Btw., to completely different matter. As there easily is crashes when using multiple patches over patches, is there any good diagnostics software to test memory, 68060 and ppc. When stressing the system with "normal software" with all these patches, there is always a chance that possible crash is sw-problem, not hw one. So real diagnostics would put ease on my mind and tell me that there is no problem with hw or some of the crashes is infact caused by ppc settings or faulty hw.

Not really, best way is to test the system with let's say a plain WB3.1 install and essential stuff without any fancy patches and check your PPC fan, if you're still using the old fan replace it with a better 12V fan.
The fan replacement solved alot of my crashes related to PPC stuff, example my computer crashed at bootup when it was about to load the AmiDock or backdrop
And also try and not to use the original CPU card spacers, the card tend to loosen from the CPU connector with these..also had this problem so I switched to tapered plastic spacer and plastic screws to hold down the card.

[quenthal]

Well, I'm now almost certain, that the problem is with Kickflash - well, maybe not with the board, but with my custom rom in it.

When I disable Kickflash, my Amiga boots up fine with no problems everytime.

I'll try my custom rom with BlizKick see if it works and boots up everytime then, then I can probably see if the problem is with the rom-image. In addition, I'll probably try the Kickflash with something trivial in it, to see if this happens then.

I'll post my findings and the stuff in my rom later. In the mean time, if there is Kickflash, other custom rom users with some sort of flash-cards or expertise on this issue please post your findings and opinions here.