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[jagoche]

I've got an old A4000 and I have troubles booting my A4000.

After powering on my Amiga literary nothing happens. I don't even get a color screen indicating some problems. The only thing I can do is a reset. Keyboard blinks once and then again nothing.

But then from time to time everything works fine... Amiga normally boots from floppy. Then I do a reset and again nothing works!?

Any ideas what is going on?

My guess is that appearently nothing is wrong with hardware, but something interrupts the boot sequence.

My configuration is A4000/040, Rev B., 3.0 ROM (All other pheripherals I have put out to find the problem).

[amesie2]

I am wondering if there might be something wrong with your floppy cable? it could be loose or a bad cable. This would be my first guess since it seems to boot sometimes.

How long have you owned the 4000 and did this just start happening?

The other thing you could try is if it has an IDE drive you could disconnect that and try booting again, 4000's tend to wait sometimes upto 30 sec. or so before they decide to boot. This is built in by design for older IDE drives that need more time to spin up and lets face it the IDE port isn't the best I've seen but it is functional.

[jagoche]

Actually I wanted to build in a CDROM.

After installing the drive and drivers and running Workbech normally I got a Software Failure and the system crashed. That was when the problems started...

My guess was also that I might have caused a shortcut somewhere while messing with the drive. But where?

Even if I disconect both cables, HD and FD, the computer doesnt start anymore?

[orange]

wait 30sec as he told you.
if still nothing happens, check the power connector on motherboard.

[rkauer]

Could be just another thing: the Amiga validating the hd.

Sometimes a program makes a bad instruction, or you have a faulty RAM chip. The program crashes, Mr Guru visits you (that black screen with red letters on it), then the computer reboots.

But if the crash happened when the Miggy was writting something to disk (and the hd is formatted with Fast File System - FFS), the ROM kickstart tries to [size=large]revalidate[/size] the hd.

Depending in the size of the partition de-validated, the Miggy could stay in that condition for hours, even days(sic!). You only notice when this happens looking at the hd led: if it stays on and the screen are black, you have a validating Miggy.

Next time it jump diretcly to Workbench.

[amigakid]

Check the battery to look for leaks. If a battery is leaking this boot sometimes issue could be a indication of damage beginning. Also check your cables for secure connection, if they are good disconnect all (besides power and HDD lights) and start the miggy up multiple times while connect another cable each time if the prior start up gave a boot screen. Also try a different monitor cable. I actually had a prob kinda like this and it was a faulty cable (loose wires inside the connector). Also does all the lights come on each time you power her up? Does the HDD spin up and does the floppy give the clicking feed me a disk sound?

Cheers

[TjLaZer]

Everyone is forgetting the true test to see it if is a software or hardware issue. Hold down both mouse buttons and see if you can enter the Early Starup! If you can co this consistently it's a software problem... I bet it is hardware. Reseat the CPU card. That seems to be a common one. Also make sure battery is not leaking, even very little leaking can cause issues.

[jagoche]

The problem doesn't seem to be related to IDE issues. It appears also when HD is out.

I cannot access the Early Startup menu, which may suggest that the problem is hardware related. I have reseated processor board and ROMs but didn't help.

The interesting detail is that if i leave Amiga off for a longer time (over night) then it will boot normally from floppy once or twice in the morning. Afterwards it doesn't start anymore at all.

After you mentioned leaking may be a possible cause, I checked and the battery does leak a bit.

I'll try to replace it and see what happens.

[countzero]

replacing the battery is not enough. take it off as soon as possible (even if you don't have replacement). Then clean the area with a solvent (pure alcohol or flux remover or something) and a tooth brush.

[amigakid]

Yeah a leaking battery can cause the mouse to not function because the chip that runs the mouse/joystick ports are about 3 chips away from the battery. Remove the battery, use alcohol to clean it, use a toothbrush to run over the chips legs, and blow it out with air. The battery is only for date/time so actually you don't need one, but if you want to put another in it i believe amigakit has them. Good luck.

[jagoche]

After replacing the battery not much has changed... Initially Amiga started up and worked for several hours without problems.

Yet after the first hard-reset it didn’t start anymore. Just like before battery replacement. Can’t even access the early start-up menu.

My guess is that computer works normally once it manages to start-up. But something prevents it to start-up most of time. Any ideas why?

When Amiga starts-up the only problem I notice is that when trying to save time I get "Can't find battery-backed up clock". Could this be related to start-up problems!?

[motorollin]

Can you see any damage caused by the battery leaking?

--
moto

[Akiko]

I've had two 4000's die in the last year, one been possibly the result of a leaky battery, which had already been long removed by the previous owner.
This time I didn't take any chances and acquired a Rev D board with the newer type coin battery installed, however with aging capacitors it's still all a case of luck.

[jagoche]

@motorollin

There were few small traces of leaking around battery, which I removed when replacing the battery.

But I can’t say if they made some damage. How do I know that?

[countzero]

I have an A4000 with a strange but similar problem. It doesn't boot from a cold boot. I have to touch a special location between the alice chip and the mouse port with flux remover and tootbrush (I spent long times to figure this out). When I do this it boots. It works for long time for no problems. Sometimes after the flux remover evaporates, it produces display bugs (artifacts around). Sometimes this leads to a crash after which I have to apply the flux remover again. Sometimes it just 'heals' itself and continues normally. If I plug in/out mouse keyboard when the machine is running, there's a high risk it'll crash.

bottomline : actually I don't have any idea but probably a via or trace in the area between the alise and the mouse port got infected with battery acid (no visible problem, both front and back of the motherboard). The flux remover solves the problem temporarily and it becomes conductive again. I'll look into this more throughly when I have some more time. You may be experiencing a similar problem.