Also installed a 100MHz cpu and it works fine.

That's great.

Does the v16 bios give any control over boot order?

v13 for gateway does.

I thought you installed 16.

Nope, I wont install directly on a gateway board. Need to first flash v9, which I was not able to locate.

ahtoh wrote:

Flashed this.
Worked great and I got CDROM boot support

Here I am 20+ years later as a former P5-90 owner and I never knew this was possible for that machine. Really regret scrapping mine many moons ago.

I flashed mine with v16 yesterday, mostly to get boot options control, in the hope of speeding up that process. I didn't notice any difference. There's no file in the package containing bug fixes or features added. derSammler says it disabled some features of the IDE controller that were problematical, but AFAIK there's no documentation of that.

Overall, I'm very pleased with this board. With 64MB ram, it makes for an excellent DOS/Win3.1 machine. IMO, the board's 2GB IDE hard drive limit is meaningless in that context; heck, I was using 40- to 100MB HDD's back then. I have it setup with a 50-pin SCSI drive, and it feels quite snappy. Win95 would probably be fine, too. For Win98, I'd want a bit faster cpu with 100MHz FSB, more memory, and USB.

I have other thoughts about this, but they're not really relevant to the content of this thread, so I'll stop there.

precaud wrote:

derSammler says it disabled some features of the IDE controller that were problematical, but AFAIK there's no documentation of that.

There was on Intel's website. Also, just enter the BIOS and you'll see that there are now option not longer changeable. The options are still there, but can not be selected anymore.

Hmm... I don't remember any IDE-related options before. But I'm not using an IDE drive so I wasn't specifically looking for it, either...

precaud wrote:

Hmm... I don't remember any IDE-related options before. But I'm not using an IDE drive so I wasn't specifically looking for it, either...

The relevant option would be the PCI IDE prefetch, which is present in BIOS 12 (don't remember which menu it's under, if not the IDE settings then maybe the Advanced Chipset page). If they were going to remove a setting for the RZ1000 workaround it would be this, and it's not mentioned in the version of the Intel documentation for the board I have (dated December 1994).

Can you post pics of the updated BIOS options you discovered in BIOS 16? Did it actually improve boot speed as you hoped? Adding CD boot support would mean full ATAPI support in BIOS, yeah? That's kind of a big revision.

Perhaps I didn't express it clearly enough; I don't see significant changes between 12 and 16. No difference in boot speed. I don't see support for boot from CD; only from A: and C: in the four possible combos. PCI IDE prefetch is Enabled and greyed out (not changeable). So v16 really didn't net me anything.

Personally, I don't see having CD boot as a big deal for a DOS/Win3.1 machine.

precaud wrote:

Perhaps I didn't express it clearly enough; I don't see significant changes between 12 and 16. No difference in boot speed. I don't see support for boot from CD; only from A: and C: in the four possible combos. PCI IDE prefetch is Enabled and greyed out (not changeable). So v16 really didn't net me anything.

Personally, I don't see having CD boot as a big deal for a DOS/Win3.1 machine.

Me neither, and I was surprised (skeptical) when the other guy claimed support for that was added. Disabling the prefetch setting is probably the signature "feature" added to that revision.

If you're not using IDE boot devices and have the Initialization Timeout set to Disabled for each of them, I don't know how much faster you can make the thing boot. There's a separate "Hard Disk Pre-Delay" that you can also Disable, but that's pretty much it. (The BIOS uses that Pre-Delay + Initialization Timeout to account for slow disks when detecting them. I don't remember the Pre-Delay setting being in R12, and it's called "new" in the documentation I have.)

JudgeMonroe wrote:

Disabling the prefetch setting is probably the signature "feature" added to that revision.

And they didn't disable it; it's enabled and unchangeable. Maybe they're making some IDE-related decisions programmatically?

If you're not using IDE boot devices and have the Initialization Timeout set to Disabled for each of them, I don't know how much faster you can make the thing boot. There's a separate "Hard Disk Pre-Delay" that you can also Disable, but that's pretty much it. (The BIOS uses that Pre-Delay + Initialization Timeout to account for slow disks when detecting them. I don't remember the Pre-Delay setting being in R12, and it's called "new" in the documentation I have.)

EDIT: Correcting my previous post. They are indeed both still there, I just overlooked them; they're in different places. "Hard Disk Pre-Delay" is under Boot Options; "Initialization Timeout" is set for each drive. My bad.

All in all, it's a pretty skimpy BIOS... but good enuf in context.

Hi all!
Sorry, digging up an old topic.
It's crazy to come across a forum like this. I am in France and last year I repaired a Gateway 2000 to introduce my children to the old world. Unfortunately this morning the hard drive has definitely failed. I have plenty of them but none are recognized. And there, bam I come across this site with the solution found! I couldn't resist commenting.

JudgeMonroe wrote on 2019-08-05, 18:06:

In this view you can see the front fan/speaker assembly (I've installed a modern Noctua fan to replace the phenomenally noisy original)

Apologies for the necro bump! I'm currently working on a P5-75, exact same case as yours, and would like to replace the crazy loud fan. Can you tell me what size it is? Anything else I need to be aware of before I go browsing?

jimnastics wrote on 2023-04-27, 14:33:

JudgeMonroe wrote on 2019-08-05, 18:06:

In this view you can see the front fan/speaker assembly (I've installed a modern Noctua fan to replace the phenomenally noisy original)

Apologies for the necro bump! I'm currently working on a P5-75, exact same case as yours, and would like to replace the crazy loud fan. Can you tell me what size it is? Anything else I need to be aware of before I go browsing?

There two fan connectors on motherboard (one near one). One is 12V “high-speed” and second 5V (low-speed). Just reconnect you fan to “low-speed” connector 😉

Babasha wrote on 2023-04-27, 18:49:

jimnastics wrote on 2023-04-27, 14:33:

JudgeMonroe wrote on 2019-08-05, 18:06:

In this view you can see the front fan/speaker assembly (I've installed a modern Noctua fan to replace the phenomenally noisy original)

Apologies for the necro bump! I'm currently working on a P5-75, exact same case as yours, and would like to replace the crazy loud fan. Can you tell me what size it is? Anything else I need to be aware of before I go browsing?

There two fan connectors on motherboard (one near one). One is 12V “high-speed” and second 5V (low-speed). Just reconnect you fan to “low-speed” connector 😉

Hmmm my board (a "Zappa") seems to only have a single 12v connector... I've ordered a silent 80mm fan, only £6 so worth a shot!

Torpille wrote on 2023-01-17, 11:26:

Hi all! Sorry, digging up an old topic. It's crazy to come across a forum like this. I am in France and last year I repaired a G […]
Show full quote

Hi all!
Sorry, digging up an old topic.
It's crazy to come across a forum like this. I am in France and last year I repaired a Gateway 2000 to introduce my children to the old world. Unfortunately this morning the hard drive has definitely failed. I have plenty of them but none are recognized. And there, bam I come across this site with the solution found! I couldn't resist commenting.
IMG_20230117_121916.jpg

That's a beautiful setup, these cases are my all time favourite vintage PC case. Hoping to get mine looking as good as you guys have got yours, needs a bit of retrobright treatmen!

JudgeMonroe wrote on 2019-08-06, 15:06:

Gateway was always good about its video cards, at least in the mid-90s. […]
Show full quote

Gateway was always good about its video cards, at least in the mid-90s.

This box has the "ATI Graphics Wonder PCI" Mach32-based card with 2MB DRAM. It won't be as fast as a VRAM card but it will get the job done for general computing and VGA gaming. The RAM is a collection of 16 V53C104HK45 chips, which are 256K x 4 bit DRAMs, as is fitting for an OEM cost-reduced card. This system is from 1994, but the Mach32 is a 1992 vintage chip, so it was already getting a little long in the tooth. It wasn't long before Gateway starting selling the Matrox Millennium, a card I personally used from 1995 until I found a game it couldn't run (Baldur's Gate).

With its single VGA connector you can drive a monitor up to XGA resolutions using a Windows 3.1 driver or the built-in Windows 95 driver, both of which support 24-bit color in 800x600 or 16-bit color in 1024x768. The Windows 3.1 driver, which doesn't really care about the connected display, can go up to SXGA (1280x1024) with 256 colors, but this mode is effectively illegible on the 15-inch monitor.

This system is of an age that both the video card and the monitor (Gateway CrystalScan 1572DG) are known by Windows 95 so no extra drivers are necessary. The monitor can be selected from a list but the Mach32 is auto-detected. In Windows 3.1 an ATI driver can be loaded to run Myst or make Hot Dog Stand really pop. DOS drivers generally aren't necessary but some professional tools had their own driver framework, notably Autodesk (CAD or 3DStudio) and the like. These and other drivers are available in the Vogons Drivers repository so no need to go ranging for them.

IMG_1482b.jpg

IMG_1483b.jpg

The discoloration on the back of the card are QA or origin stamps.

are you able to see the refresh rate settings in Display Properties in Windows 95. For some reason mine don't show. I have the drivers installed, and Windows recognizes everything but the option isn't showing, only the text scaling options. Also, I am not getting a full list of resolution options. I only have 4 or so and anyone I choose produces black borders on my CRT monitor (the 1572)