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Gateway P4D-66 Hard Drive Issues

itsvince725

Experienced Member
Joined
Nov 26, 2016
Messages
444
Location
Pennsylvania
I managed to score a beautiful Gateway P4D-66 486 system yesterday, complete with original software and accessories. But the hard drive seems to have...problems. It's picked up by the BIOS (and its correct size of 853MB is reported), it spins, it makes normal hard drive noises, but when I put in the DOS 6.22 disk 1 disk, the setup couldn't recognize the hard drive. I'm thinking it's probably bad (and I have a 1.6GB Quantum drive I hope will work as a replacement) but is there a possibility it's not?
 
Try a different HD and see what happens. The built in controller might not like drives over 512MB so you might want to go into the BIOS and make it look like a 500mb HD. You could disable the on board IDE and just use a VLB controller if you have one.
 
I received some manuals from the original owner but sadly not the manual for the computer itself, which means I can't solve a problem I have. It seems I'm stuck in turbo mode and I don't know the key combination to deactivate it and run the CPU at full speed.
 
Try CTRL+ALT+ Minus on the keypad. I found that in an article someplace regarding G2K Turbo.
 
Does that motherboard have a coin type battery, barrel type , or a Dallas RTC chip? Systems with a dying Dallas chip act kind of weird.

I have a stack of under 540MB IDE drives if you can't find one or the build in controller can't deal with one. I forget what I installed in my towers.
 
Hard drives fail. Over the weekend, I dug out a WD 30GB drive that I knew was good the last time I used it. Powered it up, got the "click (long pause) click (pause) click...." Pretty sure that it's toast and not worth investigating. Joins the recycle pile.
 
They do, I have maybe 10 3.5" HDs IDE, SCSI, and SATA in a bag in the garage waiting to be recycled. Still I have many 1xxMB HDs still running fine.
 
Does that motherboard have a coin type battery, barrel type , or a Dallas RTC chip? Systems with a dying Dallas chip act kind of weird.

I have a stack of under 540MB IDE drives if you can't find one or the build in controller can't deal with one. I forget what I installed in my towers.

It recognized my 1.6GB drive fine after I went into setup and used the auto-config utility so I'm good there. And the Dallas chip was replaced at some point and somehow still keeps time.

I don't want to be in turbo mode because I don't want my early/mid-90s games to run slow, is the thing...and since I can't seem to deactivate it (and thus turn off the turbo LED) I feel like I'm stuck at slow speed.
 
The light might not mean anything, use Norton Utilities or something like that to see what speed the system is actually running at.
 
Is there not an option you can change in the CMOS setup, Might be under "Boot options", I seem to remember you could change the boot speed from Turbo / Non Turbo in the setup. But It's been a lot of years since i had a gateway.
 
So I enabled the onboard 256k L2 cache and the CPU is running at full speed so the performance issues are solved. But now I have a new issue.

I have a Colorado 250MB tape drive with a 34 pin interface that was unhooked for some reason, so I plugged it into my floppy cable (which is a nice long one with multiple 34 pin and card edge connectors) and reconnected my 3.5 floppy drive to another 34 pin connector and now my floppy drive doesn't work. Does that mean I actually need the special data cable the tape drive came with? I don't have that cable and can't even find it on eBay.
 
Well there is a Cable but there is also a 8 Bit 1 Mb/s - 500 Kb/s Jumperless Tape Controller Card that was also used just for the Tape Drive.

I've got 3 of the Tape Controller Cards and 6 of the Cables as well as various Colorado Software and Manuals as well as Drives and Tapes of course.

What is the exact Model # of the Tape Drive.
 
Well there is a Cable but there is also a 8 Bit 1 Mb/s - 500 Kb/s Jumperless Tape Controller Card that was also used just for the Tape Drive.

I've got 3 of the Tape Controller Cards and 6 of the Cables as well as various Colorado Software and Manuals as well as Drives and Tapes of course.

What is the exact Model # of the Tape Drive.

It's a Jumbo 250, part number DJ20C19.
 
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