Gateway 2000 4DX2-66

[EverStaR]

I have purchased two of these now, only have received 1 so far and am working through setting it up and getting it optimized. I figured i would share the Journey here in case some others end up with one of these.

Thus far finding any documentation on the has been really tuff! No online manuals I have found so far and just a few references. I somehow landed here on these forums which I really like so far! Pragmatic advice and people willing to help! Thank you all. So in the spirit of the kindness demonstrated so far, I will try to give back a little as I forge ahead.

My background? Skip if such thinks cause nausea, I will keep it short. First computer experience, TRS-80 and Atari 400. First computer owned, Commodore Vic 20, then C64, Brief 128, Amiga, Amiga 500, Amiga 2000 with X86 on Bridgeboard, Amiga 1200, then Compaq 386, Self Build 486, Self Build Pentium, Mac Power PC, etc mostly Mac Intel and Predominately Intel going forward. Former Amiga Sysop, FIDONET (Yeah, remember that?) Desktop Support and OS Fantastic in the 90's, etc. Nostalgia! That's why I do retro now, those were the good ole days and tech was still exciting!

I have been on a Retro Computing Experience Computer Journey for past two years and when I do something, I usually go deep. I have been collecting some of my past haunts as well as some I never experienced yet still had curious interest. You can see what I am up to in more detail at commodorenow.com. I know it might seem like a plug, however, if you learned more about me, its that I document so that when things get pushed out of my brain, I can return to my notes. And I share so others may benefit if they can as well.

Okay, so I have two of these or will soon. 8MB Memory, SB Compatible sound card and some kind of onboard EGA/VGHA Video Processor. Revisiting the past of some almost 30 years on this is crazy. I remember some things amazingly. HD Limits, IRQ Management, DOS, Win 3.11, OS/2 all the versions, Windows all the versions, and many other ODD ball OS's.

While I was an OS fanatic in part for my love of Amiga OS, I also enjoyed the tech and the games. My work paid enough it afforded me many upgrades over the years.

So here we go again!

Let's do this!
E

 

[EverStaR]

So I ordered a Diamond Vision Video Card off eBay to go in this bad boy. The draw for me was past experience and it had the drivers disk. While I am pretty sure I didn't have this model, I just remember buying a few Diamond cards over the years. The price and features were appealing at that time.


So Okay, criticize me for paying that much! If I don't like it I will put it right back up on eBay.

So as a sidebar, I have been hunting for Motherboard documentation. It is impossible to find so far! Today I visited something called the WaybackMachine and was oh so close! Its part of an Internet Archive but only goes back to 1996. Here is how close I got to something useful. I was hoping I would find info on what jumper I will need to change on the MOBO to turnoff the onboard video and use the cards video.



So close, but clicking yielded NADA!

Apparently much to my recall, 1996 is about as far back as you could realistically go and find a robust internet budding. I was an early adopter on the Internet accessing NASA to download photos of a comet smashing into Jupiter. I went through an ISP at the time called Tyrell net and the browser was a new concept at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker–Levy_9 - 1992

So the internet was still very young and commercial companies were just really diving into it!
Well, that s post 2 in the series, stay tuned and see how the video card adventure turns out!

E

 

[Makefile]

I used to have one of those, but I don't any more.
It is an LPX form factor system with PCI and ISA slots on the riser card, right? And I believe an Intel 420 chipset of one variant or another.
The onboard video is the Cirrus 543x PCI chip they mentioned in the screenshot. Those have drivers in Windows 95 OSR2 and maybe even in the original release--I don't remember. The Stealth 64 is higher end, but is more of a Socket 7-era card, and maybe the 486dx2-66 CPU won't be fast enough to take full advantage of it.

 

[EverStaR]

It is an LPX form factor system with PCI and ISA slots on the riser card, right?

Correct! I will need to explore more still on the chipset.

Glad someone out there remembers it! Thanks for the reply!

 

[seaken]

I own a working Gateway 2000 DX2-66. I'm pretty sure I still have all the documentation. But I'm not sure where it is exactly. I'll have to do a search through my archives in storage areas. I use this computer as one of my tweeners. It talks to my LAN on ethernet and to my 8088/80286 machines through Laplink.

Sean

 

[EverStaR]

I own a working Gateway 2000 DX2-66. I'm pretty sure I still have all the documentation. But I'm not sure where it is exactly. I'll have to do a search through my archives in storage areas. I use this computer as one of my tweeners. It talks to my LAN on ethernet and to my 8088/80286 machines through Laplink.

Sean

Cool, I would be so grateful for some info if you find it! Ah yes, laplink! I wont be surprised if I find it on one of these Hard Drives I am working through!

 

[Lutiana]

Cool, I would be so grateful for some info if you find it! Ah yes, laplink! I wont be surprised if I find it on one of these Hard Drives I am working through!

MS-DOS 6 and above have Interlink/Intersrve included in it, which works very well for data transfer over a parallel or serial connection. Not as many bells and whistles as Laplink, but perfectly useable. I tend to use Norton Commander 5 to do this, as it also has a interlink functionality built in.

 

[EverStaR]

So I ordered a Diamond Vision Video Card off eBay to go in this bad boy. The draw for me was past experience and it had the drivers disk. While I am pretty sure I didn't have this model, I just remember buying a few Diamond cards over the years. The price and features were appealing at that time.
View attachment 1271596

So Okay, criticize me for paying that much! If I don't like it I will put it right back up on eBay.

So as a sidebar, I have been hunting for Motherboard documentation. It is impossible to find so far! Today I visited something called the WaybackMachine and was oh so close! Its part of an Internet Archive but only goes back to 1996. Here is how close I got to something useful. I was hoping I would find info on what jumper I will need to change on the MOBO to turnoff the onboard video and use the cards video.

View attachment 1271597

So close, but clicking yielded NADA!

Apparently much to my recall, 1996 is about as far back as you could realistically go and find a robust internet budding. I was an early adopter on the Internet accessing NASA to download photos of a comet smashing into Jupiter. I went through an ISP at the time called Tyrell net and the browser was a new concept at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker–Levy_9 - 1992

So the internet was still very young and commercial companies were just really diving into it!
Well, that s post 2 in the series, stay tuned and see how the video card adventure turns out!

E

Today is CF Drive Day and, and I have to learn a few things again apparently. So the Physical HD cant be read on my modern PC, I hoped to image it while I had it out of the computer and create a CF Drive Version of it. So, I will have to think about that one as I probably need to do some special things to get my PC to recognize it. Next thing I am working on is the CF Install itself, maybe back up the HD that way instead. Here is a picture of the Motherboard BTW.

Looks like there is an ISA IDE and a PCI IDE Connectors on the MB. The Physical HD and CDROM are occupying the PCI IDE. I need to read up on the differences to see if i can even use the ISA IDE Connector for the CF Flash.

 

[seaken]

Okay, I found some of the documentation for the GW2000, including a System CD-ROM. I copied the System CD-ROM to an ISO file. But I do not know if I can upload it here.

I will look around on the forum for some guidance. But if anyone already knows then please let me know. Can I just upload the 500MB file? Or are there rules about size or type of file? Maybe I am supposed to upload to an archive site? Not sure.

Seaken

 

[seaken]

I am uploading to you now. Bear in mind that this CD is intended to be installed to the hard drive of a working system. There is very little on the CD-ROM that is readable on it's own. Once it is installed to your computer's hard drive you will be able to get at everything on the CD-ROM through the provided software.

I do have some stuff in print also but I do not have it scanned yet. I need to set up my scanner on my work bench which is currently holding other projects. I will get to it as soon as I can.

Seaken

 

[EverStaR]

Okay, I found some of the documentation for the GW2000, including a System CD-ROM. I copied the System CD-ROM to an ISO file. But I do not know if I can upload it here.

I will look around on the forum for some guidance. But if anyone already knows then please let me know. Can I just upload the 500MB file? Or are there rules about size or type of file? Maybe I am supposed to upload to an archive site?

Thanks, really really appreciate your help!

 

[seaken]

You are welcome. I will try to upload more Gateway stuff as I get it scanned.

Seaken

 

[Makefile]

Looks like there is an ISA IDE and a PCI IDE Connectors on the MB. The Physical HD and CDROM are occupying the PCI IDE. I need to read up on the differences to see if i can even use the ISA IDE Connector for the CF Flash.

It makes more sense to put your hard drives on the PCI connector and the ATAPI CD-ROM on the ISA. The ISA bus can sustain about 16X CD or so before it's saturated, and any faster is probably louder than you are willing to tolerate anyway. Also if you run Windows 3.x, the 32-bit disk access doesn't play nicely with MSCDEX accessing a CD-ROM on the same interface.

 

[EverStaR]

It makes more sense to put your hard drives on the PCI connector and the ATAPI CD-ROM on the ISA. The ISA bus can sustain about 16X CD or so before it's saturated, and any faster is probably louder than you are willing to tolerate anyway. Also if you run Windows 3.x, the 32-bit disk access doesn't play nicely with MSCDEX accessing a CD-ROM on the same interface.

I do agree, just not having much luck getting the system to recognize the CF Drive so still working it out. EZ-Drive sees the original primary drive as well as an old drive formatted from some system past. It wont see the CF Drive yet. Also, the CD doesn't seem to be recognized on the IDE ISA Connector. So I have a bit of re-learning to do on all this and of course the lack of a MB Manual doesn't help. The other drive, is 1GB so I don't think it is a size issue. besides, on another machine I formatted some 512K Flash cards just to see if that would work without luck. I might need to try a different CF drive adapter.

 

[Agent Orange]

I do agree, just not having much luck getting the system to recognize the CF Drive so still working it out. EZ-Drive sees the original primary drive as well as an old drive formatted from some system past. It wont see the CF Drive yet. Also, the CD doesn't seem to be recognized on the IDE ISA Connector. So I have a bit of re-learning to do on all this and of course the lack of a MB Manual doesn't help. The other drive, is 1GB so I don't think it is a size issue. besides, on another machine I formatted some 512K Flash cards just to see if that would work without luck. I might need to try a different CF drive adapter.

Seems to be an ongoing problem with CF drives. You may want to 'FDISK' the CF drive in an attempt to remove OEM crude. Worked for me in several instances. Good luck.

 

[Zare]

You can also prepare CF "disks" on a modern PC.
There is a full-system emulator called 86Box. One can make a raw type of virtual disk with fixed size, that has exact geometry that will fit the CF card and/or be appropriate for the target PC. Then basic fdisk/dos install stuff can be done on a virtual instance booted using floppy images - the format distributed on winworldpc site so it's a very fast approach. Then dump the image to the card - on Windows with w32diskimager.

Afterwards the CF should just boot in the target PC.
And yeah when the dump to card is complete OS should automount the FAT partition(s) so you can move extra files around immediately.

 

[modem7]

I do agree, just not having much luck getting the system to recognize the CF Drive so still working it out. EZ-Drive sees the original primary drive as well as an old drive formatted from some system past. It wont see the CF Drive yet.

Are you are supplying power to the CF-to-IDE-adapter ?

 

[EverStaR]

Are you are supplying power to the CF-to-IDE-adapter ?

Yes. it lights up, have switched it between master and slave. It works on another on PC vi IDE to USB connected to the IDE Adapter.

 

[EverStaR]

Yes. it lights up, have switched it between master and slave. It works on another on PC vi IDE to USB connected to the IDE Adapter.

However, apparently doing so causes the issue, it may only need power from the IDE cable, just learned that from the seller. I will have to try it out whenI get a chance.

 

[Zare]

The model that I have is useless without extra power, e.g. it doesn't work on just cable power with any CF card I tried, no lights, just dead.

If you can't get CF coexisting with that controller setup, you can still backup via network. Boot something like Norton Ghost from CD. Or maybe if you have an atapi burner you can backup that drive on a couple of CDs.

The CF-IDE is a dumb bridge, CF is same as hard drive, if it's too large BIOS won't recognize it. Are you using a card that's 8GB or less?