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Gateway 2000 486DX2/50 BIOS

M

mwin

Member
Joined
Jul 22, 2013
Messages
24
Location
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Hello,

I am working on a Gateway 2000 486DX2/50.
The Motherboard is a Micronics 09-00081 Baby Gemini.
It has a Phoenix 80486 BIOS PLUS Version 0.10 G21-2 RIDE.
I am trying to put a 1TB hard drive into this system.
From what I understand I need to update the BIOS to make this happen.
Does anyone have a BIOS update for this board?
I believe the last version that came out was Part no. M4GS20 Revision 4.03.6.10 that is according to this website :

http://www.rigacci.org/docs/biblio/online/firmware/mfibios.htm

Please let me know if you can help. Thanks.
 
I wouldn't be too confident the latest release of that BIOS supported drives > 128Gb either because I don't see it mentioned in the notes - so you could face the same issue after the update.

For my 386 setup I used the AT version of the XT-IDE ROM, wrote it to a 27C256 and installed it as a Boot ROM on my network card. I haven't tested it with 1TB, but it's booting an old Seagate 20Gb drive just fine - but DOS only lets me access the first 8Gb because of it's own limitations.

Another option is drive overlay software that provides the support. I haven't had much experience with that and 1TB drives, but that could be worth looking in to.
 
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And if it doesn't it probably will support 528 MB of that drive. You've got to try it to find out. And a DDO will give you all of the drive.
 
I have already put the drive into the system and it does not work. It sees 320MB of the Drive. I also tried a 875MB Hard Drive I have with the same result the system only sees 320MB. The BIOS is a very early one on this board.
 
mwin said:
I have already put the drive into the system and it does not work. It sees 320MB of the Drive. I also tried a 875MB Hard Drive I have with the same result the system only sees 320MB. The BIOS is a very early one on this board.
Click to expand...

Have you set the drive type in the BIOS? Most older systems don't autodetect drives on boot like a modern system will, my bet is that BIOS is still set to the old 320MB drive type ;-)

EDIT: There may not even be an autodetect routine at all in the BIOS config, you MAY have to manually set C/H/S.
 
Interesting results, so what I have been doing up to now is setting the C\H\S manually as per what is printed on the drive. The BIOS does have a autodetect routine but I did not try it before. When used the 875MB disk detects fine and formats to full capacity. But the other drive which is actually a 1.2GB Drive detects at 1024 and will only format to that. Is this normal or is there a limit??? I tried a 2.1GB drive and it too detects at 1024 in autodetect.
 
When you say 1024 do you mean cylinders or MB? The 1024 cylinder limit is the 528 MB limit and I think you mean cylinders and therefore have a 528 MB limit. If you thoroughly investigate that 875 MB drive you might determine that it only has 528 MB of space that is useable in the partition you have created.
 
mwin said:
Interesting results, so what I have been doing up to now is setting the C\H\S manually as per what is printed on the drive. The BIOS does have a autodetect routine but I did not try it before. When used the 875MB disk detects fine and formats to full capacity. But the other drive which is actually a 1.2GB Drive detects at 1024 and will only format to that. Is this normal or is there a limit??? I tried a 2.1GB drive and it too detects at 1024 in autodetect.
Click to expand...

The best case scenario for your board is to support LBA with a limit of 8.4GB. If it does, then when at autodetect it should detect 1024 cylinders and say "LBA" somewhere.
The worst case scenario is the 528MB limitation. If it does have this limitation, then it should detect more than 1024 cylinders, but only the first 1024 will be usuable in practice.
There are also some other scenarios, like the "Large" mode that is less likely to be the case. I don't remember where this mode had its limit, because LBA mode was used instead of that one
 
If you are using a Quantum or Seagate branded hard drives, they have free brand-locked versions of Ontrack Disk Manager, which will let you overcome BIOS limits, I have them available in my utility downloads, I have not found any other free versions of ontrack, but there are other solutions like the XT-IDE BIOS, you can write it to an EEPROM and place it in most auxiliary ROM sockets (like the boot ROM socket on a NIC) and it will take over hard disk functions of the system BIOS, IIRC it handles LBA48 so it should support ANY large PATA drive you can throw at it.
 
I have a Gateway 2000 486, Phoenix Bios, built in Feb. '95, with two hdds: 1 GB and 1.5 GB. They are auto-detected. Here's the Bios page:
CMOS settings 001.jpg
 
Ya', but just because they can be autodetcted doesn't necessarily mean that the BIOS can support them in full. :) It's two separate operations and detection ╪ full support in all cases.
 
I just thought the OP would like to know that it should (or could) work. I have the 486 DX-2 Gateway 2000 (@ 66 mhz) but it uses the Phoenix Bios 4.04 C which I think is a newer Bios than what he is using. In my system, the 1.6 GB hdd is auto-detected and operates fine. Here's a link to that BIOS. The only thing I'm not sure about is the exact model of motherboard it is using. It's the large tower model. The Bios page says: "the Aries 486 PCI Non-integrated motherboard" I don't know if that's a Micronics board or not. :confused:
 
After working on this system for the last two weeks it seams that orion24 was right. The system will detect hard drives that are bigger than 528MB 1024 cylinders but when formatted the drive cannot be used to its full capacity. So the system is definitely limited to 528MB. I am using a Samsung 850MB Hard Drive which actually has a Jumper for DOS Setup which limits the Drive to 1024 cylinders. So when this jumper is set the drive detects at 504MB and formats to that size.

I am than able to install DOS 5.0 on the Drive but now a new issue. After the install is done the system will not boot to DOS. It checks the memory, the hard drive light flashes for a second and the system just sits there. There is no setting in the BIOS for a boot device and the partition which has DOS on it is set to active. I cannot figure out what I am doing wrong.

Billyray the link for the BIOS you provided is for the Anigma motherboards that came is some of these systems. I have a Micronics motherboard.
 
When I set up my GW 4DX2-66V, I had to use an Ontrack (GW OEM version, IIRC) dynamic drive overlay software to get the hard drive, which was over 528mb, to work. BEFORE I installed the DDO, I was able to install DOS, but then had trouble installing Windows 3.1 on it. It, like yours, would hang sometimes and other times would throw read errors. That was using the built-in auto detect feature. The DDO solved this and I was able to continue without read errors and random lags.

Hope this helps.
 
mwin said:
I am than able to install DOS 5.0 on the Drive but now a new issue. After the install is done the system will not boot to DOS. It checks the memory, the hard drive light flashes for a second and the system just sits there. There is no setting in the BIOS for a boot device and the partition which has DOS on it is set to active. I cannot figure out what I am doing wrong.
Click to expand...
Sometimes the format/s command doesn't quite do the trick (if that is what you are doing). You may need to try sys c: even though the system appears to already be on the HD. It's worth a try.
 
Not sure if this is useful information or not, but I'll post it anyway.

I had a weird issue doing a DOS 5.0 install with original MS DOS Install software and it making a mess of the FATs when > 32Mb.
I dunno if it's just my version - ended up in some weird messes despite it saying it was successful and rebooting. FDISK/FORMAT etc etc were all fine, but the installer caused me headaches.

So if Stone's recommendation doesn't help and you did use the installer - try doing it manually instead and see if it turns out differently.

Also if this is a 486, DOS 6.22 is worth considering - memmaker will bring your conventional memory dreams to life.
 
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