More investigations/hints:
- emulation setup just uses a DOS\1, bootable partition.
- the file and path name are not case-sensitive, as this is handled by the file system, which isn't case-sensitive either.
- tested with FFS V40.1 in RDB, but also tested with pfs3aio (see Aminet), showing that there is no requirement on flags being set/unset for the kickstart file.
So there is really no reason why it should not work in the configs that you have described here. If this is an attempt at getting an unnecessary product mentioned in this forum, you've failed - people reading this only see that it's a waste of money and a loss of support from iComp. Don't try this again.
If you're serious about debugging this, please click the "hidden" close-button at the top right of the kickstart selection screen (not the cancel button that reboots) and see if the partition is really mounted. You'll have to boot from a WB1.3 disk in that case, as the "Kick1.4" will fail to boot from anything newer. The "Info" command works the same and will reveal if the partition has been mounted.