Amiga 4000 takes eight minutes to boot (solved) sort of

[David Wright]

Another issue that I just noticed. When finally in workbench mouse movement is jerky and erratic. Two optical mice and one std. tank mouse. Optical work well on other Amigas.
Joystick seems ok but I swear there were issues of function before just thought it was a glitch.

Related? I sure as heck don’t know.

[Vlabguy1]

Do you have an A3640 card? Seems like a good place to start. If possible get the machine back to bone stock ..no hard drive and real floppy drive. Seems kind of odd that this started happening after the software update. Which in way might be blessing that it’s not a hardware issue..but then again these old machines are sensitive.

Rich.

[David Wright]

No other card. Actually it all started when i removed old old roms then installed new. Software worked well with 3.1 roms.
When I reinstalled old 3.1 roms issue remained.
One too many times removing warp card/roms may have done something possibly.

[davideo]

I initially had problems getting my 4000D with a WarpEngine and a SCSI2SD and 3.2 to boot.

After a week of trying to get it to see the SCSI2SD it suddenly started to work.

No idea why it suddenly worked but at no time does it take 8 minutes to boot.

[QuikSanz]

May be a poor solder someplace, chips may get old but fail predictably, Bad solders are random.

Chris

[mechy]

i use a 6 slot pcd-60b scsi card reader on the warpengine scsi in a A4000 and even checking all luns at boot its pretty fast still. 8 minutes is crazy long.

[glitch]

I can't remember (getting old) whether the A4000 had any nvram like the A3000.  If so, I wonder if whatever is stored in there got scrambled, or is not compatible with KS3.2 and may be causing the delay.  I used a program (SetBatt for example) to clear out and re-set the contents to my liking on an A3000.  Perhaps that might help.

I have recalled seeing elsewhere that not having a real floppy attached can cause delays with 3.2, but have not been able to test that myself yet.

[David Wright]

I looked at the setbatt in Aminet. Strongly discourages using in other Amigas

[Havie]

Go on, admit it, you put Windows on it, didn't you.

[Pat the Cat]

Jerky mouse is usually the chip U541, a 74HCT166 that multiplexes direction and forms MDAT signal going to Lisa.

Could also be track issue with same signals rather than chips.

Could that on its own slow down Workbench boot? I don't know.

[David Wright]

I don't see a U451 chip anywhere.

[Pat the Cat]

I'm sorry, I was looking at the A4000T schematic, not the Desktop.

U975 on a Desktop version.

Roughly same position on either full or CR A4000D, about a couple inches from the clock battery, close to the edge of the motherboard.

Right in line to have dodgy connection from a spoiled battery.

[David Wright]

Why always this amount of time? As Pat calculated the scanning on scsi channels or luns, works out to about that much.
Not saying one couldn't be misled by that but if it was a bad solder joint or bad chip wouldn't there be more inconsistency?
Even if it was, why would those issues fall in the exact same time frame.

It really feels like a system hang until it completes a routine that has some disruption, missing component then completes it work.
I can disconnect or connect all and same result.

This may have to find it's way to a competent technician.
In the past when I would take this off the shelf to play with it was always a slog getting it to boot up. Many attempts at trying to boot then finally the chime which
meant success. After that there was never a day gone by it reverted to poor startup , until I laid it away for a while. Then repeat.

I also remember last year trying to get a zz9000 to work and with poor results or none at all. Thought then it might be the daughter board but bought another one, same thing.
One more issue just to confuse all of you. I have a video toaster card that came with this and when powering up their was a high pitched whine coming out of it.
Then, I thought it was the Toaster but what if the load from it was causing the motherboard to react.

This machine has a new atx power supply by the way.

[Vlabguy1]

No other card. Actually it all started when i removed old old roms then installed new. Software worked well with 3.1 roms.
When I reinstalled old 3.1 roms issue remained.
One too many times removing warp card/roms may have done something possibly.

I guess it is possible something might have happened removing the warp/roms. A shame you dont have another cpu card, makes testing/troubleshooting a little more difficult. 

Rich

[Pat the Cat]

Why always this amount of time?

Outside chance of it being a fault with the reset circuit,

This times a specific time by charging up a capacitor, if the resistor feeding it developed a higher resistance, it would take longer to charge.

Oh, that chip also handles some timing signals as well as the mouse, so  could just be that one chip (more likely connections to and from it).

[Vlabguy1]

Why always this amount of time?

Outside chance of it being a fault with the reset circuit,

This times a specific time by charging up a capacitor, if the resistor feeding it developed a higher resistance, it would take longer to charge.

Oh, that chip also handles some timing signals as well as the mouse, so  could just be that one chip (more likely connections to and from it).

Could be. But seems odd that he is just having this issue after making a rom/software change. You would think these issues would have occurred before if not just more randomly. But again these old machines tend to do better the less you mess with them. Could always check the power supply output voltages. Without having another machine or other parts to swap and test and not seeing anything visibly wrong with any of the boards this could take a while to resolve..