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Gateway 2000 486 DX/2 50

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Unknown_K

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So I won a Gateway slim desktop 486 DX/2 50 machine on ebay. The unit was advertised as non functional (no video) but powered up. Its in decent condition for its age aside from over a dozen leaking aluminum capacitors (which is what I am hoping are the problem). Seems like some of the grean coating over some traces has bubbled up but the traces are still there as far as I can measure. This is one of those units with built in video and 5 ISA slots (no VLB).

Anybody ever use/own one of those? I ordered new capacitors (they all seem to be 22uf 25V thankfully I don't have to hunt down a bunch of different values) so when they get here in a few weeks from China the recapping work should be quick. Along with no video I don't seem to be getting a BIOS beep nor does the machine search for the floppy, probably a capacitor issue. This thing came with a SONY proprietary 2x CDROM drive connected to an (aztech?) sound board.

I always liked those Gateway 2000 designs, hope I get this one working.
 
Funny you should bring this up. I'm currently working on a Gateway 2000 433/SX. When I got it, it had a problem with it not recognizing the floppy or hard drive. I disabled the onboard floppy and hard drive, put in an Adaptec 1522 SCSI board, and still the same thing. Now the video has quit working. I tested the capacitors with a multimeter and found 3 that were shorted. Ordered the replacements and they came yesterday (the same aluminum electrolytic 22uF 25V). The motherboard in mine is an Intel Classic R and can take several different speed 486 processors by setting the right jumpers. All the ISA slots are on a riser card so my main board may be different from yours.

Specs are here:

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/I/INTEL-CORPORATION-486-CLASSIC-R.html

Looks like this.

Gateway 2000 002.jpg
 
Same exact board here except I have the 4 video RAM chips and half the cache is full.
My ISA slots are on a riser (2 on one side and 3 on the other).

I ordered the cheaper radial electrolytic capacitors (they seem to last longer), should be here in a few weeks.
 
Yea sure, in a few days when I dig the machine out again (I stripped it and put it back together yesterday since I won't have the capacitors for a few weeks and I hate having machines in parts).
 
Well the capacitors have been replaced, still dead. So now I have to look for a broken trace (and I will check out the VRAM and cache chips).
 
I brought a compaq 486 back from the dead that's very similar. Same thing, went over that board dozens of times, replaced a few bad ics and all the caps, still no video. Onboard ET4000w/32. But on teh up side, I threw in a video card, ATI Mach64, and behold, it was alive! So guess have you tried using an isa video card yet?


Also, take a look at your photo. See the slot where the bus riser goes? Just above that , far left is a group of 3 caps, just to the right of the back-plate. Right next to that is a square chip. I believe that is the ramdac for your video chipset. See if that is getting warm at all. It should be pretty warm within 30 seconds of booting. It should get warm but not super hot. If its super hot find a way to mount a heatsink or replace as well as check those 3 caps located next to it...

Short of getting a fine iron and re-flowing all the solder joints for the video section, im outta ideas atm >.<
 
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I know this is a dead post but I want to bring it back as I am resurrecting the exact same machine. I have had this slim desktop 486 SX33 for some years now and its been dead. Same motherboard as above. I even bought a similar machine from @ajacocks at last octobers swapmeet as he has the same system all working and upgraded. I thought at the minimum it might help me fix mine.

Well fast forward to today and I took the machine apart. Turns out it has a Pentium overdrive cpu which is great. IT also had bad ram. I found the coincell cmos battery was actually leaking! I sing the praises of these cells but they sometimes, although infrequently leak. I used vinegar on the boar and gave it a thorough was as I couldnt tell if the smd caps were leaky as the board had a layer of dusty grime. Do these smd caps on 486 gateaways need the same recapping mid 90s macintoshes do???

Anyway I swapped the ram and cleaned up some contacts and disconnected everything and the cards and it posts. (actually thats how I found the ram was bad so I swapped in new ram).

Tomorrow ill put it back together and see if I can get any life out of the hard disk.

All 9 cahce sockets are empty. What cache chips can I add? Anyone have a source?

Im excited. Im on a much needed PC kick as I have been stuck in 8 bit land for so many years now.

Looking forward to this build.
 
I have never seen a coin cell leak, but I guess you hit the lottery.
Still have my machine on the shelf, guess I should look back into fixing it.
 
Glad you got it working. It is rare that the coin cells leak, I picked up a Tandy 1000 TL/2 last year and it also had a leaking 2032. Not as bad as say a varta but still they are worth checking.
 
I have seen small sealed batteries leak (hearing aide types) used in keyfobs and flashlights leak alot, but when it comes to coinsized ones, Maybe 3 times before. it happens but not often. There was just some crystal I cleaned with vinegar and washed the board. I am wondering about the SMD caps if they are going to be an issue. When I put it back together today or tomorrow I guess we will find out. Time to track down a restore disk.
 
VERAULT said:
I am wondering about the SMD caps if they are going to be an issue. When I put it back together today or tomorrow I guess we will find out. Time to track down a restore disk.
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SMD capacitors aren't generally a problem after being washed. Just insure the board is completely dry.
 
ARGHHH! Life but not working. This screen is what I get with no cards or drives installed and different ram than what the machine came with:
IMG_20240206_164742.jpg

My only choice is to hit esc but that comes back to the exact same screen a second later. Could this be the cirrus logic onboard video? Possibly Video RAM chips (VRAM chips X4 are socketed).


Also I think the pentium OverDrive 83mhz cpu might be shot. It only posts ocassionally but if I swap it out for a 486 DX33mhz it posts just about every single time :(

Thoughts?
 
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VERAULT said:
Do these smd caps on 486 gateaways need the same recapping mid 90s macintoshes do???
Click to expand...

Yes. Doesn't matter what machine it is, if it has 80s, 90s or early 2000s SMD electrolytics, they're all trash and leak. I've replaced thousands of them, on all matters of devices, not just Macintosh machines.

Sometimes it's hard to know if they are actively leaking, because the plastic base wicks the electrolyte both between the board and the plastic, and the body of the capacitor and the plastic. The capacitor can leak quite a bit before you even notice they're leaking. And since the electrolyte is conductive, whenever the board is powered on, electrolysis will happen and accelerate the eating of traces and pads under the capacitor.

I'd recommend getting a reputable brand capacitor to replace them, not Chinese mystery meat from Ebay or Ali Express.
 
VERAULT said:
My only choice is to hit esc but that comes back to the exact same screen a second later. Could this be the cirrus logic onboard video? Possibly Video RAM chips (VRAM chips X4 are socketed).
Click to expand...
Can you not get into setup before this all displays? This is coming from your BIOS not from CL Video.

VERAULT said:
Also I think the pentium OverDrive 83mhz cpu might be shot. It only posts ocassionally but if I swap it out for a 486 DX33mhz it posts just about every single time :(
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If it is giving issues I would just put the original CPU back in. You could replace it but they seem to be going for way too much money on eBay, IMHO.
 
Ok Today was a day of tons of progress.

first off Thanks @GiGaBiTe for suggesting the caps. I had my doubts but ran out of things to try so I recalled the 2 dozen plus SMD caps yesterday evening. It was late when I finished so I didnt test it until this morning.
I fired it up and was now able to get into the system bios.
IMG_20240208_144003.jpgIMG_20240208_104329.jpgIMG_20240208_104322.jpgIMG_20240208_112202.jpg

So the original 2X 4MB 72 pin simms give bad ram errors. So I added new ram. As of now I have two 8MB modules in there for a total of 16MB of ram and thats fine for my needs. The 83Mhz intel Pentium overdrive must have a fault as it will only boot intermittantly. The 486 DX 33mhz I installed boots every time. The bios is old, version 1.0 with no IDE auto detection. Does anyone know if the firmware updates have been archived? I sincerely hope so. I connected the original Western Digital Caviar 2340 341MB drive into the bios when I found the sector/track info online. And it booted. It was riddled with errors but no bad sectors. I was able to backup the sony proprietary cdrom drivers [it has a 34 pin SONY CDU33A-GW |(Gateway?)| and matching 8 bit ISA COR334 controller card]. Not really anything else on the drive worth saving sans a mickey mouse memory game. I thought at this point I could reload the OS but I thought, hell I want to run a Compact Flash alternative. And for the life of me I could not get any of my IDE to CF adapters and CF cards to work on this bios! I dont know what it is but I get nothing but bios errors and FDISK sees nothing. So I formatted the old caviar drive and loaded DOS 6.22 and windows 3.11 from a gateway OS cd I have. Problem is that cd has no gateway programs or drivers. I went on archive.org and found ver 1.5 and ver 1.7 gateway restore cds from around 1996 but thats far too recent.

So my next questions is where can I find the actual drivers and original gateway software for this desktop? Where can I find a Bios upgrade?

And how can I add CF card HDD replacements?

I got the etherlink iii it came with working as windows setup took care of that. And since the unit is working I bought a 486 heatsink fan, and gateway keyboard and mouse from ebay.

Oh one last thing. Good news too. I found I had one other sound card in my stash. I bought this card to add to my IBM 5160 but never did. Its an 8Bit ISA Sound Galaxy BX II. Anyone know if there are windows drivers and dos drivers for this thing (saves me from having to buy another expensive sound card.
IMG_20240208_114733.jpgIMG_20240208_114741.jpg
 
VERAULT said:
And for the life of me I could not get any of my IDE to CF adapters and CF cards to work on this bios! I dont know what it is but I get nothing but bios errors and FDISK sees nothing.
Click to expand...

Flash memory is a LBA block device. If the BIOS has no concept of LBA addressing, then it will never see a flash storage device. LBA was an optional part of the early IDE specs, and wasn't widely implemented until the mid 90s when DMA/UDMA became common. Anything prior to 1996 likely isn't going to support LBA addressing. Since your BIOS lacks even proper auto disk detection, it certainly isn't going to support LBA.

That being said, there were some flash memory devices that would present fake CHS addressing to the disk controller for backwards compatibility, namely DOMs (Disk On Modules.) There were also some early CF cards that would fake CHS used in early laptops. There are also some flash controllers that support CHS translation, but not auto detection. So you can fudge CHS values to get an approximate disk size and the device will work, you just had better remember those numbers in case the settings are lost.

I'm not familiar with XTIDE, but maybe you can burn it to an EEPROM and stick it on a network card or something to override the system BIOS's own disk handling routines. Another option would be to use a SCSI controller with either a SCSI drive or a SD2SCSI or BlueSCSI, which use flash storage. They're expensive though.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
Flash memory is a LBA block device. If the BIOS has no concept of LBA addressing, then it will never see a flash storage device. LBA was an optional part of the early IDE specs, and wasn't widely implemented until the mid 90s when DMA/UDMA became common. Anything prior to 1996 likely isn't going to support LBA addressing. Since your BIOS lacks even proper auto disk detection, it certainly isn't going to support LBA.

That being said, there were some flash memory devices that would present fake CHS addressing to the disk controller for backwards compatibility, namely DOMs (Disk On Modules.) There were also some early CF cards that would fake CHS used in early laptops. There are also some flash controllers that support CHS translation, but not auto detection. So you can fudge CHS values to get an approximate disk size and the device will work, you just had better remember those numbers in case the settings are lost.

I'm not familiar with XTIDE, but maybe you can burn it to an EEPROM and stick it on a network card or something to override the system BIOS's own disk handling routines. Another option would be to use a SCSI controller with either a SCSI drive or a SD2SCSI or BlueSCSI, which use flash storage. They're expensive though.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info. So I was kinda of fearing that. I have never bought a disk on module before. So you say they should all work? Can you recommend a good starting one ( I really dont want to spend alot on my first DOM as its just dipping my foot in the water) I look on ebay and I see 40 pin and 44 pin!! Im not sure what to get.
 
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