A4000T hardware issue? Workbench boots completely blank.

Hello! I'm new to the EAB website but I'm a long time Amiga user starting with an A500 that I got about 20 years ago (and still use on a regular basis!)

I recently was given an A4000T complete with Video Toaster, some other video editing related cards (not sure what they do), and a second tower filled with 5 hard drives and a tape drive which connects to the A4000T over several chunky SCSI cables.

Well stupid me decided the first thing I was going to do was upgrade it from 3.1 to 3.9 and I botched that up somehow. Now it doesn't boot to the hard drive, I think I formatted it but I can't remember. So my plan to get the computer up and running again is to reinstall 3.1 and that brings me to my problem.

When I pop in a Workbench boot disk, it boots up but Workbench shows no drives and it won't do anything. I can move the cursor around but right clicking the mouse button doesn't cause the familiar top menus to appear either. I have tried 3 different backups of 3.1 as well as 2.04, 1.3, and 1.2 disks I have from my A500 (all work fine on the 500) and had no luck with any of them. What my screen looks like is below.

I'm not sure what the heck is going on with this thing at this point. I'm starting to think that it's some kind of hardware issue but I'm new to the A4000 and it's a much more complicated beast than my trusty ol' A500.

Does anyone have any experience with their Amiga acting up like this? Tips and advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[zipper]

Boot without startup-sequence. Missing workbench.library in Libs:? It's not on 4000T KS-ROM, 4000T disk set has it.

[r.cade]

This is correct- the 4000T won't boot from "old" Workbench disks, as the library is not on there.

You must add it from the 4000T OS disk set to boot others...

Awesome, thanks guys! I didn't realize the 4000T had its own unique Workbench install disks. The computer came with a ton of documentation and manuals but no disks unfortunately. I scanned the directories of my Amiga Forever installation and found a file called "workbench.library", I'm going to try adding it to the disk and seeing if that does the trick.

[ancalimon]

Don't forget to backup everything on your harddrive. It probably has tons of software in it.

EDIT:

Posts: 666

[videofx]

I am surprised it let you get that far. Normally if you try to boot or install Workbench on a tower without using the install disks that have workbench.library it normally locks up. Thats how I know when I have the wrong disks

The only thing that was installed on the computer were the video editing softwares which I fortunately do have the disks for. The computer was used by a company that made promotional tourism videos and was only ever used for that. The boot hard drive is surprising empty!

[ancalimon]

Originally Posted by mcoswald

The only thing that was installed on the computer were the video editing softwares which I fortunately do have the disks for. The computer was used by a company that made promotional tourism videos and was only ever used for that. The boot hard drive is surprising empty!

There might be errors on the disks. Plug your hdd to your pc, install amikit configure and run it. Then backup just in case.

Originally Posted by ancalimon

There might be errors on the disks. Plug your hdd to your pc, install amikit configure and run it. Then backup just in case.

I will definitely take your advice and do that while I'm working on setting everything back up! Thank you for your help!