First off, welcome to the Vogons.org forums!

Second, that's a really nice EISA bussed Gateway 2000 486 you got there. I don't know much about it either but I'll tell you what I do know about what you have:

A short circuit will trip the protection inside the power supply, causing it to only run for a few microseconds at the most before powering back down. A common cause of "grown" shorts are those round tantalum capacitors. I see a couple mounted on the SCSI card (the one card in the leftmost slot in that picture), try removing the card and power it up, and see if that changes anything.

The power supply looks to be a more or less standard "classic AT" style bulky box with the switch mounted on the side.

Oh yeah, when you do get it running: be ready to hunt down an EISA configuration disk, as early EISA systems like this often needed a special utility to configure them. Unfortunately these utilities are not standardized, and you'll have to find one specific to your motherboard. If you're really lucky (and the HDD still works) it's possible that the utility may be on the hard drive.
Gateway often used parts from different manufacturers, such as Micronics, Anigma, etc. so we'll need some closer shots of the motherboard to assist in identifying it.

Is that a Micronics motherboard ?
I have a couple of these.
Gateway 2000 486dx-33 Restoration

Unlikely it's the same motherboard, this is an EISA bussed board. I am still trying to identify it myself.
It doesn't seem to match any of the Micronics EISA 486 boards in TH '99 either. Closest I got was a Mylex, but it doesn't match any of those either.

Eep386 wrote on 2021-02-09, 19:37:

Unlikely it's the same motherboard, this is an EISA bussed board. I am still trying to identify it myself.
It doesn't seem to match any of the Micronics EISA 486 boards in TH '99 either. Closest I got was a Mylex, but it doesn't match any of those either.

Yeah.. I don't think it's a Micronics board either.. I'll try to take a full photo of the board a little later today
It certainly appears to be a mystery..

Eep386 wrote on 2021-02-09, 19:11:

First off, welcome to the Vogons.org forums! […]
Show full quote

First off, welcome to the Vogons.org forums!

Second, that's a really nice EISA bussed Gateway 2000 486 you got there. I don't know much about it either but I'll tell you what I do know about what you have:

A short circuit will trip the protection inside the power supply, causing it to only run for a few microseconds at the most before powering back down. A common cause of "grown" shorts are those round tantalum capacitors. I see a couple mounted on the SCSI card (the one card in the leftmost slot in that picture), try removing the card and power it up, and see if that changes anything.

The power supply looks to be a more or less standard "classic AT" style bulky box with the switch mounted on the side.

Oh yeah, when you do get it running: be ready to hunt down an EISA configuration disk, as early EISA systems like this often needed a special utility to configure them. Unfortunately these utilities are not standardized, and you'll have to find one specific to your motherboard. If you're really lucky (and the HDD still works) it's possible that the utility may be on the hard drive.
Gateway often used parts from different manufacturers, such as Micronics, Anigma, etc. so we'll need some closer shots of the motherboard to assist in identifying it.

Thank you!
I'll definitely test it without the SCSI board and let you all know how it goes.
The power supply itself is really strange as well, I'm having a really hard time finding any information on it as well.
It's a Powertronic TK-4230 DF, I've only found a couple people selling them for very high prices on very sketchy websites..

Yeah, I figured, I'm praying that hard drive has the utility on it...

Seems to be a closer match to the one in this fellow's system? Desktop Score! Gateway 2000 EISA 486 and a Image Advance 386!

Eep386 wrote on 2021-02-09, 20:00:

Seems to be a closer match to the one in this fellow's system? Desktop Score! Gateway 2000 EISA 486 and a Image Advance 386!

Yep! That's the exact one in fact!

Here are the pictures of the main board as well as the SCSI card.

I've also discovered that it is an Anigma board I believe, I think the model number is AN486EISA

I've tested it without the SCSI card, still no luck, I'm trying to check for any sort of damage to the main board itself..
I don't have the clock battery connected, could that be affecting it? I'm not as familiar with how older PC batteries function.

Unless the battery leaked all over the board, I don't think a missing battery will cause a short-circuit in this case.

It's possible one of those surface-mounted tantalum caps on the motherboard is shorted. A Polar Toneohm 950 would be helpful in finding out which cap is shorted, but if you have a sufficiently sensitive multimeter (one capable of reading sub-ohm values) you could try probing each smoothing cap and see which one returns the lowest resistance value.

Eep386 wrote on 2021-02-10, 03:29:

Unless the battery leaked all over the board, I don't think a missing battery will cause a short-circuit in this case.

It's possible one of those surface-mounted tantalum caps on the motherboard is shorted. A Polar Toneohm 950 would be helpful in finding out which cap is shorted, but if you have a sufficiently sensitive multimeter (one capable of reading sub-ohm values) you could try probing each smoothing cap and see which one returns the lowest resistance value.

There doesn't really appear to be any other caps on the board (that I recognize as caps at least)
Is there anything else that might be causing it?
There isn't really any damage that I can point out on the board, and the bottom is completely dust free..

A missing battery will cause a lot of vintage motherboard to fail to post. Replace the battery with a new one and try again.

Warlord wrote on 2021-02-10, 07:53:

A missing battery will cause a lot of vintage motherboard to fail to post. Replace the battery with a new one and try again.

Fail to post or fail to power on at all?
Also where should I look for a new battery? most of the ones I'm finding on ebay are incredibly expensive. The battery that came with this one originally is a 844 Rayovac. It's 4.5 Volts.

A missing CMOS battery will cause a failure to post, not a failure to power on. Depending on if the motherboard uses a pin connector it may be possible to wire in a three AAA or AA cell battery holder in place of the custom 4.5V CMOS battery; use lithium batteries for best results (and lowest potential for leakage over time).

There's a handful of surface-mounted tantalum caps on the motherboard, those little orange rectangles with the two, relatively wide metal legs on opposite sides. Odds are one of those is shorted. With the motherboard's power switched off and disconnected from the power supply, test them with a multimeter: they should not report low ohm resistance, but since most of them are on the same power rail, when one shorts they will all appear shorted at first glance. To find the one responsible for the short, set your multimeter to the lowest ohm setting possible and look closely at the ohm readout as you test the caps: the one with the lowest measured resistance could very well be the shorted cap. Don't bother with the orange things with multiple legs (such as the one just barely visible below the cap I circled in the picture), those are resistor arrays.

Eep386 wrote on 2021-02-10, 16:34:

A missing CMOS battery will cause a failure to post, not a failure to power on. Depending on if the motherboard uses a pin connector it may be possible to wire in a three AAA or AA cell battery holder in place of the custom 4.5V CMOS battery; use lithium batteries for best results (and lowest potential for leakage over time).

There's a handful of surface-mounted tantalum caps on the motherboard, those little orange rectangles with the two, relatively wide metal legs on opposite sides. Odds are one of those is shorted. With the motherboard's power switched off and disconnected from the power supply, test them with a multimeter: they should not report low ohm resistance, but since most of them are on the same power rail, when one shorts they will all appear shorted at first glance. To find the one responsible for the short, set your multimeter to the lowest ohm setting possible and look closely at the ohm readout as you test the caps: the one with the lowest measured resistance could very well be the shorted cap. Don't bother with the orange things with multiple legs (such as the one just barely visible below the cap I circled in the picture), those are resistor arrays.
Surface Mounted Cap.jpg

Alright, I'll go through and check all of them today and let you know how it goes.
Also! I want to say thanks a ton for taking time out of your day to help me with this. I seriously appreciate it.

No worries. I hope to see this beautiful old box up and running someday.

Nice looking system - it's a shame it won't power on atm, and that info on these Gateway Anigma boards is hard to come by. Anigma were only the independant OEM design house rather than the fabber (Micronics / TI?) until Gateway bought them out.

There was a guy called Ben Myers (had an account here at Vogons as ben_myers) who apparently once had loads of info on these boards - here's an old web page of his

https://web.archive.org/web/20011109131728/we … nics/anigma.htm

A quick hunt on archive.org turned up this old Gateway support page for Anigma EISA boards

https://web.archive.org/web/20030804124034/ht … le.asp?id=14997

Based on your possible model#, I'd assume it's the first or third one

I'd be surprised if a dead external battery stopped the board powering on (more likely to just get a load of EISA config error messages on the POST screen) but no harm in trying a fresh battery - here's some info on the battery from one of those board links

https://web.archive.org/web/20031224130519/ht … /Mttery01.shtml

Also, in case you ever get the thing powered on, here's a copy of the correct Gateway Anigma EISA Config Utility (ECU) and BIOS flash package.

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2021-02-11, 00:31:

Nice looking system - it's a shame it won't power on atm, and that info on these Gateway Anigma boards is hard to come by. Anig […]
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Nice looking system - it's a shame it won't power on atm, and that info on these Gateway Anigma boards is hard to come by. Anigma were only the independant OEM design house rather than the fabber (Micronics / TI?) until Gateway bought them out.

There was a guy called Ben Myers (had an account here at Vogons as ben_myers) who apparently once had loads of info on these boards - here's an old web page of his

https://web.archive.org/web/20011109131728/we … nics/anigma.htm

A quick hunt on archive.org turned up this old Gateway support page for Anigma EISA boards

https://web.archive.org/web/20030804124034/ht … le.asp?id=14997

Based on your possible model#, I'd assume it's the first or third one

I'd be surprised if a dead external battery stopped the board powering on (more likely to just get a load of EISA config error messages on the POST screen) but no harm in trying a fresh battery - here's some info on the battery from one of those board links

https://web.archive.org/web/20031224130519/ht … /Mttery01.shtml

Also, in case you ever get the thing powered on, here's a copy of the correct Gateway Anigma EISA Config Utility (ECU) and BIOS flash package.

ecfg432.zip

Thank you so much! I just found Ben Myers's stuff for the micronics motherboards earlier, but couldn't find anything for the Anigma motherboards..
This information is super helpful! Especially that EISA config!