Yes, they're heatsinks. I've seen them before.

You might be stuck with that power supply because Gateway had a proprietary form factor (still ATX power connectors, but smaller than normal). I've also heard a lot of complaints about them failing, even though they came from some of the better manufacturers (I've seen Astec, FSP, and Newton Power).

I didn't realize that Gateway had a 120mm fan ducted to the CPU heatsink in those things. It's a pretty high-speed fan by modern standards, too.

lti wrote on 2025-06-30, 04:57:

Yes, they're heatsinks. I've seen them before.

You might be stuck with that power supply because Gateway had a proprietary form factor (still ATX power connectors, but smaller than normal). I've also heard a lot of complaints about them failing, even though they came from some of the better manufacturers (I've seen Astec, FSP, and Newton Power).

I didn't realize that Gateway had a 120mm fan ducted to the CPU heatsink in those things. It's a pretty high-speed fan by modern standards, too.

*groans* aww... When I read that, I thought "WHAT?!?" and went and picked it up and it was immediately obvious it was a weird form-factor... I only removed it and plopped into the "pile" for cleaning. And OH yeah, that fan moves some air, BUT it was going the wrong direction...

I got most of the Gateway cleaned, so I'm going to finish work on that right now. Windows98 is installed on the drive that's going in (Seagate ST310212A). I've only run some DOS games on it so far and it works pretty good. I'll put it in the case and then install the voodoo. I have not tested anything but the board/mem/CPU.

The floppy was PACKED with dirt, 🤣 Makes sense, though, because the CPU fan was ALSO an exhaust fan. There were NO HOLES for incoming air and the "nothing" panel on the other side had a sheet dust bunny under it. CD drives shared the same fate; lens was completely obscured. It'll be nice if only the hard drive was bad.

I can also report that this was a smokers' computer, back when it was used, as the yellowing that I thought was just "normal" yellowing, washed away... The "nothing" side and top are also plastic and came back to white. Very nice!

Got the Gateway fully cleaned and powered on again. Tested the power supply and had good voltage with and without load. It's got a bit of a squeal, though. This PSU has another oddity: The fan plug that goes to "PWR SUPPLY FAN" on the motherboard; it goes into the PSU, and I didn't look if it just goes straight to the fan connector, but I suspect this is what is happening. The fan did not run during testing.

And ALSO, the case DOES have screw holes for a regular PSU*!

All good, so I'll put the video card back and the sound card and see if those work.

I think Gateway intended for those tiny holes on the front to be the air intake so the hard drive (and maybe graphics card) got some airflow. Otherwise, you would basically have that side fan blowing directly into the PSU fan. It obviously wasn't enough ventilation, though.

The proprietary PSU situation is weird. Some of the cases had the full-size ATX PSU cutout and an adapter plate to mount the proprietary one. Surprisingly, those Astec PSUs (I almost typed "Astec POS," but that might come from seeing modern Artesyn stuff at work) seemed to be the most failure-prone. I didn't see too many of the FSP (branded Power Tronic) models, but the Newton Power ones seemed to be better. Gateway claimed that these had a fan controller, but if the fan doesn't spin at all, you should make sure it still spins with a different power source. I don't think anyone would have made a semi-fanless power supply in 1999.

The power supply fan DOES seem to be working normally now. I unplugged the PSU fan header from the board and it kept going. Maybe I missed something when it was apart. I did test the fan separately after I had it apart for a lube-job.

I attempted installing drivers last night, but my untested CDROM drive was a bust... Of course when I don't test it... SO, I just took it apart and found the obvious culprit (should've seen it earlier, I've been tired as F). The lift guide for the head assembly was off the track.

I reset it, then opened and closed it a few times and BAM, it came to life. The activity light wasn't even lighting up before as it thought it was open still. It reads great now. The Voodoo3 driver disk read right away and I got those installed.

Only one thing left:

And success! I was surprised how smooth it was compared to other 8M/16M video cards I've tested. It looked a bit different as well. Now to install Quake(s) and Half-life!

Ope. What in the heck did this psycho just cook up? It all started when I thought "Hey, I've gotten better at soldiering, I should shorten my test mouse cord". I indeed made it shorter...

Awww, 🤣 Duude, it clicks good, though!

I have wanted to do this since I was a kid!

Counter strike.

I've been playing Quake 2 on the Gateway for the last couple of days. I put it away for a bit to work on a few new entries (and finish a few).

First off, these guys:

Gemlight GMB-P56IPS-V0 and a Micronics Twister AT

The Micronics said it was broken, and noted a bad regulator. The Gemlight looks good, only a dead Dallas. Easy on that one, so I started with the Micronics yesterday.

I started with a cleaning and replace the battery.

I set it up with my test AT power supply (no memory, VGA) and it started beeping, very angry CPU beeps.

I checked the voltage at the regulator(s) and it was good. 3.3 I/0 3.2VC. I removed the CPU and noted the voltages were still readable without a CPU (no angry beeping with CPU out). I set VCore to 2.8V and put a known-good MMX in. Then it was memory beeps. I put in two of the memory modules it came with and a video card and it booted up. The VCore regulator does get HOT for sure. It has been replaced before, it seems, but I haven't checked the datasheets yet. I may need to replace it.

The Gemlight had a soldered Dallas, so that was the first place to start:

I replaced it with a socket and then went to town on the Dallas. I found a pretty fast way to deal with it this time.

The first test was good, so I added the battery and it keeps time/CMOS. I only booted to DOS from floppy so far on this board.

I'm working on the boring PowerSpec right now. Installing Windows XPx64 and drivers only, since it's so boring. I will be back to the Gateway to finish Quake 2 before I go over the AT boards again.

I finally finished Quake 2 (Normal difficulty) . So many flashbacks to when I played it the first time. Very good still.

After that, I cleaned my desk and brought out my computer from work. I was using it as my personal alignment machine. It has been having problems keeping it's CMOS when the power went out. The battery is new.

I have NOT resolved the battery issue, but I fixed a few other issues I haven't noticed before, since it went straight to work. It was NOT able to detect the CPU properly. It showed up in windowsXP as a single core and Everest was also a bit confused.

Checking the BIOS, it was older than the CPU, so that was an easy fix. I updated to the 2006 version, since this CPU was from 2005 (Athlon64 X2 3800+). It was then detected by the BIOS and then Windows (after a restart). Strange that it didn't show up right away. There was a noticeable increase in speed and responsiveness.

I then replaced the single 1GB DDR333 with two 512M of DDR400. With 1:1 Bclk/Dram ratio, things REALLY sped up! It boots like lightning now.

I also added a sound card, (since the onboard wasn't working properly) an Audigy LS (SB0310). It doesn't NEED sound, but it's nice to hear the ding when I need to roll the car forward and back, etc.

I'm going to revisit it in the future and get some help with figuring out why it can't keep time/CMOS. The board will have to come out for that, and it's a real pain. I need it at work, so I'll let it slide for now.

Tonight, I'll be looking at the Micron Twister AT board. I'll be investigating the datasheets on the regulators and possibly remove the vcore one, to replace it, if it's not correct. I'll have to look around, but I think I might have a few. Possibly one I can steal from a bad board, too.

I would like to test the AMD CPU it came with in another board as well; I have a TX98-XV that looks like it will do the job.