8 hour boot for Duo v1

[JMDXray]

I have had multiple problems with my SPARC Duo (NV+ still going like a champ). I had multiple boot failures, with pulsating blue light, never finishing a boot. Tried software reset; USB boot; I swapped in new drives and did a factory reset, reseated memory, lather, repeat. Then it came up (once). I updated to 4.1.9 but had problems, after a LONG boot, so tried to flash back to 4.1.8 but no joy- came back up as 4.1.9. The next reboot stalled at 12 hours (I ran out of patience); next attempt took 8+ hours, both disc LEDs green but pulsating power light with low speed fan the whole time for all boots. The most recent went from 7 AM to 15:23 (by log) - but it came up. I guess I can't ever shut it down again. Logs in Frontview didn't elucidate the problem, and trying to skip the resync/sector check (hold 'til first blink) didn't help. During these long boots i can shut it down with the power button (didn't have to pull the plug) but it is unpingable during the boot except for 30 seconds near the beginning where it makes a (blue dot) cameo in Raidar and then disappears. I called and paid for support during all this; they told me it was dead and out of warranty during one of the several steps above, but it wasn't dead, because so long as it stays on it seems to fxn fine, aside from temporary inability to use AFP from one computer, but that seemed to be local and was fixed with computer reboot. Any help appreciated- I'd love to be able to reboot once a week without being down from 8 to 20 hours.