LoudLad wrote on 2020-04-21, 10:41:

They had to remove the HDD and RAM for security reasons

Boomer logic.

I have a couple of these gateway 2000 486/33 computers.
They have the micronics motherboard with a bios that is a pain to use.
The first thing I would do is replace the battery. A low battery can cause all kinds of problems.
I think these use fast page ram. CPU can be upgraded to 486dx2-66 or intel 486dx4-100 overdrive.
These support up to a 410mb IDE harddrive.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-04-21, 13:40:

CPU can be upgraded to 486dx2-66 or intel 486dx4-100 overdrive.

Or to a 83 MHz Pentium Overdrive, since it's a socket 2.

derSammler wrote on 2020-04-21, 13:46:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-04-21, 13:40:

CPU can be upgraded to 486dx2-66 or intel 486dx4-100 overdrive.

Or to a 83 MHz Pentium Overdrive, since it's a socket 2.

Yeah, you don’t need to change any jumps as it is already set for 33mhz bus.
Just pop in a
Intel 486dx2-66
Intel 486dx4-100
Intel 83mhz Pentium

The Pentium would give you best performance for modern DOS games if you are going to use a CF card.
Otherwise a 486dx2-66 is good enough for most DOS games.

If this is for a Museum as an interactive exhibit I'd go with DX2/66 or maybe DX4/100 as these represent what a lot of people got in the mid 90's
8MB ram is fine It'll need to be FP Ram as mentioned above. I actually like micronics motherboards as are decent quality and really reliable, but yeh do funny things when battery goes and usually its a dallas chip not a nice easy coin battery.

CF card is probably good way as the PC will be on all day and probably idle for long periods between visitors. Plus you can have a backup you can quickly insert when general public do something stupid like format the drive or delete a system file.
An adapter that allows you to select master or slave is usually a higher quality then those that don't, but they are all pretty cheap

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-04-21, 15:01:

Yeah, you don’t need to change any jumps as it is already set for 33mhz bus. Just pop in a Intel 486dx2-66 Intel 486dx4-100 Int […]
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Yeah, you don’t need to change any jumps as it is already set for 33mhz bus.
Just pop in a
Intel 486dx2-66
Intel 486dx4-100
Intel 83mhz Pentium

But for a DX4, it needs to be an Overdrive - or you will need to find out how to change the CPU voltage

LoudLad wrote on 2020-04-21, 10:41:

I've been lurking for a while now but only now decided to sign up. […]
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I've been lurking for a while now but only now decided to sign up.

My dad helps run a local museum, and they have a number of old computers of various types, but none of them are on and available to play with. I went up to the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge a couple of months ago and took some pictures of how everything was setup, and soon enough the higher-ups at the museum have agreed that they should try something similar. Obviously they've recently shut their doors during the human malware, but that just gives me a good amount of time to work on getting this thing running again.

I got this at my last job, a Gateway 2000 4DX-33 that had been collecting dust for decades (I had literally put my name on it to make in case they throw it out). They had to remove the HDD and RAM for security reasons, and I had managed to replace the RAM, but not the HDD. I know compact flash is a potential replacement for IDE HDDs, but I've heard that there are some compatibility issues with certain IDE to CF converters. Anyone know of a good broad-range compatible converter, or better yet, has done similar to their Gateway2000 machine?

I have a pentium II in the garage which I'll take out and clean up once I have this one fixed.

Hello,

I disagree with all the other answers 😁
Before thinking of any upgrades, test the computer as is. So I strongly recommend to NOT start to fool around with Compact flash cards and adapters as a first thing.
Did you do some tests already?
So boot from a floppy disk and run some dos benchmarks, or other dos programs.

CoffeeOne wrote on 2020-04-21, 20:24:

Hello, […]
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LoudLad wrote on 2020-04-21, 10:41:

I've been lurking for a while now but only now decided to sign up. […]
Show full quote

I've been lurking for a while now but only now decided to sign up.

My dad helps run a local museum, and they have a number of old computers of various types, but none of them are on and available to play with. I went up to the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge a couple of months ago and took some pictures of how everything was setup, and soon enough the higher-ups at the museum have agreed that they should try something similar. Obviously they've recently shut their doors during the human malware, but that just gives me a good amount of time to work on getting this thing running again.

I got this at my last job, a Gateway 2000 4DX-33 that had been collecting dust for decades (I had literally put my name on it to make in case they throw it out). They had to remove the HDD and RAM for security reasons, and I had managed to replace the RAM, but not the HDD. I know compact flash is a potential replacement for IDE HDDs, but I've heard that there are some compatibility issues with certain IDE to CF converters. Anyone know of a good broad-range compatible converter, or better yet, has done similar to their Gateway2000 machine?

I have a pentium II in the garage which I'll take out and clean up once I have this one fixed.

Hello,

I disagree with all the other answers 😁
Before thinking of any upgrades, test the computer as is. So I strongly recommend to NOT start to fool around with Compact flash cards and adapters as a first thing.
Did you do some tests already?
So boot from a floppy disk and run some dos benchmarks, or other dos programs.

Yes, programs like MSD or Speedsys should work.
And a3D bench.

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/dos-benchmark-pack.html

I definitely would not invest any money into it until you get the base unit checked out.

CoffeeOne wrote on 2020-04-21, 20:24:

Hello, […]
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Hello,

I disagree with all the other answers 😁
Before thinking of any upgrades, test the computer as is. So I strongly recommend to NOT start to fool around with Compact flash cards and adapters as a first thing.
Did you do some tests already?
So boot from a floppy disk and run some dos benchmarks, or other dos programs.

That's a fair point.
So after a few days, I managed to get a replacement battery and some floppies (surprisingly not cheap nowadays even on ebay).
Battery works, the datetime is kept, but a couple of problems arising:

On post, 2 beeps with code 135: I don't know.
1 beep with code 130: I don't know either.
2 beeps with code 002: No boot device available.

002 makes sense since there's no HDD, but in the BIOS I had set the boot device to 'floppy or hdd'. It detects the floppy drive in the BIOS fine as 3.5" 1.44MB. I had newly IMG'd a floppy with dos6.22 so it should pick it up, unless there's something I missed.

Any ideas?

If that is a Phoenix bios:
http://yusoft.kulichki.com/doc/phoenix4.pdf
135 = 0x87h Configure devices
130=0x82h Detect external RS232 serial ports

IMG'd a floppy... with something from bootdisk.com or similar? Do you have any other way to read that floppy elsewhere and does it have a command.com etc in there that you would expect?

evasive wrote on 2020-04-30, 19:54:

If that is a Phoenix bios: http://yusoft.kulichki.com/doc/phoenix4.pdf 135 = 0x87h Configure devices 130=0x82h Detect external R […]
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If that is a Phoenix bios:
http://yusoft.kulichki.com/doc/phoenix4.pdf
135 = 0x87h Configure devices
130=0x82h Detect external RS232 serial ports

IMG'd a floppy... with something from bootdisk.com or similar? Do you have any other way to read that floppy elsewhere and does it have a command.com etc in there that you would expect?

Thanks for the link!

I used Dos 6.22 boot disk from archive.org, and yes it has COMMAND.COM. I imaged it using DD, and my usb floppy drive I had to re-find.
Interesting observation when I tried it just a couple of minutes ago: I would expect the drive to spin up and make some noise before it decides it can't use the floppy drive to boot from, but it's silent. I'll try another floppy drive, I think my pentium II box has a floppy drive, I'll Frankenstein it.

Thanks for the help guys.

Ok, there's always the possibility of bad hardware. If the floppy light stays on, the cable is on backwards btw. Can be at the floppy end or on the motherboard.

evasive wrote on 2020-05-02, 10:36:

Ok, there's always the possibility of bad hardware. If the floppy light stays on, the cable is on backwards btw. Can be at the floppy end or on the motherboard.

Nice! Problem fixed. Booted into DOS and ran some of the benchmarks and checks, everything seems to be functioning fine.

So, anyone know of any bizarre compatibility issues with certain CF drives/cards or are they mostly fine?

No such thing as a high quality CF adapter. They are all cheap Chinese products.
People seem to have the must luck with adapters that have a jumper that allow you to select Master or Salve so would go with one of those.

lower capacity cards seem to cause less issues.
Keeping in mind you are setting this up in a museum with I'm amusing dos and 1 or 2 games you can probably get away with a 256 or 512mb card

You'll definitely need to be careful with the size of the CF card. I have a slightly newer Gateway 2000 4DX2-66V which won't work with hard drives or CF cards larger than 512 MB.

Hello, Vogons! Sorry for hijacking this thread, but I recently picked up a Gateway 2000 with the EXACT SAME motherboard and bios pictured in the first post from LoudLad, and I'm having some POST error codes and beeps pop up that I can't seem to track down.

I tried looking at this:

evasive wrote on 2020-04-30, 19:54:

If that is a Phoenix bios: http://yusoft.kulichki.com/doc/phoenix4.pdf 135 = 0x87h Configure devices 130=0x82h Detect external R […]
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If that is a Phoenix bios:
http://yusoft.kulichki.com/doc/phoenix4.pdf
135 = 0x87h Configure devices
130=0x82h Detect external RS232 serial ports

but that's for Phoenix Bios 4.0 release 6.0, and my computer has Phoenix Bios A486 v.1.00.06.AC0, and the codes don't seem to match.

HERE IS WHAT'S GOING ON:
The computer boots and displays the following codes at POST (one at a time, each number changes to the next):
440
370
330
290 [pause at this point, does a memory test, memory test completes]
210
190
135 [BOLD on the screen, followed by 2 beeps]
130 [two quick beeps]
010
000 [one beep, boots from drive]

I can boot from a floppy into DOS, and successfully played a game of Jones In The Fast Lane, so things are "working", but I'm concerned about all of the POST garbage.

HERE IS WHAT I HAVE TRIED:

In addition to all of the number codes, I also got a "Invalid ISA Configuration" so I got into the Setup (press F1 instead of ESC when prompted) and put all of the values to how they ought to be.
Same result, but without the "Invalid ISA Configuration" error.
Next, I removed ALL of the cards. (modem and sound card)
I Cleared the CMOS via the jumper on the board, and replaced battery.
Booted again into Setup, set all values accordingly, and rebooted.
STILL get the same POST error codes at startup.

I also tried using the Phoenix Bios Setup utility posted here in another thread, but that messed EVERYTHING up and I had to clear the CMOS and start again.

I found another message board with someone having the EXACT SAME problems, with identical error codes, but their problem was solved simply by replacing the battery and entering all of the proper values into the CMOS setup. Which I did, but that didn't seem to solve my problem. Link to that site/thread: https://discussions.virtualdr.com/showthread. … 134-Invalid-ISA

As stated, the system seems to be working once it's booted up but I'm irritated by all of these error codes.

Any help would be appreciated! 😀

Gateway 2000 overdrive build

I have been running into that. This board doesn’t have very many resources.

Play with the irq/address jumpers on the cards. That’s how I solved it for me.

It goes through a bunch of post codes during start up. That is normal. The error messages are what you need to be concerned about

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-09-13, 16:34:

Gateway 2000 overdrive build […]
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Gateway 2000 overdrive build

I have been running into that. This board doesn’t have very many resources.

Play with the irq/address jumpers on the cards. That’s how I solved it for me.

It goes through a bunch of post codes during start up. That is normal. The error messages are what you need to be concerned about

Hey! You've got the SAME MACHINE I do!! (Mine is also an OverDrive, but only 128k Cache)
I've pretty much solved all of the error messages (Invalid ISA configuration, Memory size invalid, etc.) but I still get all those "extra" beeps.

I'm really bummed to learn about the hard drive size limit, though. The smallest working drive I currently have is a 1.2GB.
I wonder if the 512MB hard drive size limit would also limit the use of a Zip-750 drive?
I did pick up a 386/SX-16 last year which came with an interesting internal ISA card which loaded a separate BIOS to recognize "larger sized drives." (it has a 512mb installed)

I'll move this conversation to the other thread and maybe we can figure out this beast together! (You're right... zero resources about this board.)

Might be able to use a zip 250?

I bought a scsi controller.

Got 8gb working now

It beeps a bunch on post, normal I guess. Mine does it.

Xt-ide I believe can increase the supported size. (The card of which you speak maybe?)