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First post, by RJDog

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So, I just bought a Socket 370 motherboard for the first time in about 17 years, a Gateway 4000622... I'm pretty happy. I haven't received it yet, but I have a couple of questions.

Unlike the Dell equivalent of the Intel D815EEA that Phil did a video on a little while ago, this one doesn't have the AUX power connector on it (although it is clearly the same board, it has the solder points for this connector, but isn't populated), does the Gateway version use regular ATX power connector?

Also, I assume the drivers from Intel for the D815EEA board will work, and I do not have to get Gateway-specific ones for the board... is the same true about the BIOS? Can I flash it with the Intel version of the BIOS, or do I need Gateway-specific one for that?

And lastly, the heatsink... the board is coming with a 667Mhz P3 processor... that should require a fan on the heatsink, shouldn't it? I can't imagine that it could be cooled passively, could it? The picture is of the auction item won...

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Reply 1 of 11, by brostenen

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I don't know about power connectors. I only have the board made by Intel specifically. And it is an awesomme board I can say. So congrats on this purchase. Mmmm.... For the driver question, then I guess you can just use one of those Intel driverpacks, that supports 440/910/915/920 chipsets. Personally I do not know if a fan is required, it should require a fan as such, and I would allways run a fan. For the sake of keeping it all safe, just use a heatsink with a fan. 😀

All that said. I hope you will have a great time with your new board. I have the d815eea2 variant, and as far as I have read. It can take Tualatins up to some 1.2ghz. I have had mine running with GF2-GTS, GF3-ti200, GF4-ti4200, Matrox-G400 and G400-max plus Voodoo3-3500. It is a wonderfull board you have there.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

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Reply 2 of 11, by TheMobRules

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RJDog wrote:

Also, I assume the drivers from Intel for the D815EEA board will work, and I do not have to get Gateway-specific ones for the board... is the same true about the BIOS? Can I flash it with the Intel version of the BIOS, or do I need Gateway-specific one for that?

I don't know about that particular board, but I can tell you my experience with an older Intel LT430TX that I took from a Gateway 2000. Trying to flash the Intel BIOS to it using the provided tool did not work since the flash utility checks a bunch of bytes in the header that identify the manufacturer and it failed as it expected a Gateway BIOS file.

I was able to flash the Intel BIOS by setting a BIOS recovery mode jumper and then turning on the machine with the BIOS in a floppy. There was no monitor ouput for that procedure, only a couple of beeps indicating that the BIOS recovery had completed. Howver, it did not work straight away, as for some reason the Intel BIOS disabled the integrated ATI Rage VGA. However, using an add-in graphics card did the trick and it booted up successfully.

Reply 3 of 11, by RJDog

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brostenen wrote:

I don't know about power connectors.

Yeah, I think I'll just have to be patient and wait until it gets here and I can assess it then. I believe I read somewhere that it is normal ATX, but if it isn't I'm sure I can figure it out.

brostenen wrote:

For the sake of keeping it all safe, just use a heatsink with a fan.

I agree... I'll have to splurge and buy a $8 heatsink/fan on eBay, I guess...

TheMobRules wrote:

Trying to flash the Intel BIOS to it using the provided tool did not work since the flash utility checks a bunch of bytes in the header that identify the manufacturer and it failed as it expected a Gateway BIOS file.

Hm, yeah, that is what I was afraid of. Not that I'm opposed to trying to put an updated Gateway BIOS on it... but... anyone know where I could get it?

Reply 4 of 11, by chinny22

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I knew Dell and Gateway slot 1 motherboards were true intel boards, never realised that followed though to S370 but makes sense.
Going off their Slot 1 motherboards which I have one of each.
-Gateway use standard ATX and the AUX connector is part of Dells non standard power setup which is why its missing from the gateway board.
-Generic drivers will work fine
-BIOS seems like you can use intel, I myself wouldn't risk it though
http://www.motherboards.org/forums/viewtopic. … hp?f=3&t=109805
- In its original case their would have been a fan mounted just above the CPU heatsink, so yeh fan forcing airflow over it is recommended!

Looks like the latest gateway bios is EA81510A.15A.0012.P09 but cant find it either
You could also try searching Fedora which is the motherboards name or systems what had the motherboard, but didn't have much luck with this either

Reply 5 of 11, by RJDog

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chinny22 wrote:

In its original case their would have been a fan mounted just above the CPU heatsink, so yeh fan forcing airflow over it is recommended!

Ah, that makes sense. I can probably do the same thing, actually, just have a reasonable air-moving fan mounted above the heatsink.

Reply 8 of 11, by happycube

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Yup, that's a nice reliable board. Big downside of the 815's the 512MB RAM limit, alas.

The lack of fan was due to OEM cases in that era already using rear case fans with ducting. The 667 doesn't run that hot though, so it would probably do OK in a non-cramped case even without a fan.

Reply 9 of 11, by johnnystarr

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RJDog wrote:

So, I just bought a Socket 370 motherboard for the first time in about 17 years, a Gateway 4000622... I'm pretty happy.

@RJDog, hey I realize that I'm bring an old post out of the archives here but I was wondering how things worked out for you. I'm asking because I recently bought this same board but haven't built a machine just yet. Any gotchas in your build would be quite helpful. Thanks!

Reply 10 of 11, by yawetaG

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brostenen wrote:

Personally I do not know if a fan is required, it should require a fan as such, and I would allways run a fan. For the sake of keeping it all safe, just use a heatsink with a fan. 😀

On Gateway cases the power supply is positioned in such a way that an additional fan that is integrated in the power supply sucks away the hot air from the CPU, straight through the power supply and then out of the case. So low MHz Pentium 3 processors only need passive cooling.

Reply 11 of 11, by brostenen

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yawetaG wrote:
brostenen wrote:

Personally I do not know if a fan is required, it should require a fan as such, and I would allways run a fan. For the sake of keeping it all safe, just use a heatsink with a fan. 😀

On Gateway cases the power supply is positioned in such a way that an additional fan that is integrated in the power supply sucks away the hot air from the CPU, straight through the power supply and then out of the case. So low MHz Pentium 3 processors only need passive cooling.

Nice.... I have my board in a case, that has a big 80mm fan in the back. Not the best in terms of noise polution, yet the fan is one of those lownoise and sucks a lot of air. Get's the job done none the less. 😀

Someone here mentioned the memory limit of 512 as a downside. Well... More than 512mb for Win98se is not adviceable anyway, so I personally do not see any problem with it. This platform is too weak for WinXP anyway. So no problem with only 512 as I see it.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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