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[Argus]

Again my sad tale or woe: I have a A4000 m/b that I've been trying to figure out what is wrong with it. When I turn it on the power led cycles form dull to bright and the harddrive spins up for a few seconds but right when it should activate df0: little or no floppy action happens (very rarely does the floppy light up at all), then the harddrive stops at a sort of lighter grey screen. I've tried all the usual suspects, swapped roms, cleaned fast slot, different simms, cleaned simms, new crystal oscillators, swapped power supplies, cables, etc. There is zero corrosion near the battery area but some near a leaking cap near the audio outputs (a couple vias seem corroded). Would this be enough to stop a boot? I already had this board serviced with new cia's so they are definitely not at fault. And yes, all the jumpers are correct. Ideas?

[Erol]

Yours is staying on Grey the system is waiting for the Hard Drive or Floppy Drive..

Unplug the Floppy Drive and Hard Drive, do you get a kikstart prompt screen?

If the screen remains on any of the following colors on bootup, here is what they mean: -

-Black
Opening screen
Initial Hardware tests passed
Initial system software tests passed
Final initialisation test passed

-Red
ROM error, reseat or replace Kickstart ROMS (this can also be caused by worn insulation covering the back end of the pins that connect an IDE cable to a hard drive, aka short).

-Green
Chip RAM error

-Blue
Custom Chip(s) error

-Yellow
68000 detected error before software trapped it (software or hardware error

[Argus]

No kickstart disk prompt w/ or w/o drives attached.

[patrik]

@Argus:

What monitor are you using and how is it connected?


/Patrik

[Doobrey]

Argus wrote:
No kickstart disk prompt w/ or w/o drives attached.

How long did you wait for the 'insert-disk' screen without a floppy attached?
IIRC, my A4000 took around a minute when the floppy cable came loose.

BTW, have you tried booting without the zorro daughterboard to see if it could be a fault on that?

[Oliver]

Corroded vias could cause any manner of fault, depending on their location to in a circuit. I've never actually dealt with this though. btw, what sort of cap was leaking. Some old caps had extremely carcinogenic materials as their dielectric spacer. Take care.

[Argus]

@Patrik

I've tried a 1084 and a 1950 via the 23 pin rgb port..no luck.

@Doobrey

I can wait forever and nothing but grey screen, w/ or w/o daughterboard attached...I don't think it's an autoconfig problem.

I just uploaded a picture in the A4000 photo directory.

[DaBest]

Welcome to the dead A4000 motherboard. I tried everything and nothing worked on my end. Hope you have better luck.

[Argus]

@DaBest

Not completely dead, just won't boot. :boohoo: