3MB... 🤣 That's a horrendously tiny amount of ram for a 486. I take it the onboard video uses up 1MB?

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

3MB... 🤣 That's a horrendously tiny amount of ram for a 486. I take it the onboard video uses up 1MB?

I'm not sure on the onboard video side of things, honestly. 🤣

First post here!
I like your build. You should definitely add cache and tag. I upped mine from 128k to 256k It allowed me to up my memory to 128 MB! I run Windows 95b in my Gateway 2000 P4D-66 tower with a DX-2 486 @ 66 Mhz. Windows runs nicely, and can even surf the interwebs with Opera 8 or IE 5.5.

Billyray520 wrote:

First post here!
I like your build. You should definitely add cache and tag. I upped mine from 128k to 256k It allowed me to up my memory to 128 MB! I run Windows 95b in my Gateway 2000 P4D-66 tower with a DX-2 486 @ 66 Mhz. Windows runs nicely, and can even surf the interwebs with Opera 8 or IE 5.5.

Hey! Welcome to Vogons! 😀

Say, do you know what chips are compatible for tag and cache? I tried some off a random motherboard on mine, but it didn't want to boot fully. It hangs. And I did try the correct jumper settings.

I'd like to browse the internet for grins and giggles on a 486. 🤣

Thanks for the welcome. 😊 Your Gateway is almost exactly 2 yrs. older than mine. (Mine is date coded 2/9/95) I doubt if your mobo has the same sram as mine. But for what its worth, I have "ISSI IS61C256A-20N (9323)" I added 4 chips to get the full 256k of cache. It looks like you have to add 8 chips? Have you determined the mobo make? For example, mine uses the Anigma board. But a lot of Gateways used the Micronics board.

Well, it may be an Anigma board. Most I can find is it may be a LP48625SX model. All I found were jumper settings.

I'm having a hard time finding compatible RAM, since all my extra RAM sticks don't seem to be compatible, and also I wonder if those are the same ISSI chips I have. I have four of ISSI chips, and five of another kind. (Which I can't recall.) I'll have to check when I get home this afternoon from work.

Any particular chips needed for TAG? There's even a IC socket for DB RAM. shorter than the tag and cache sticks.

I have a soft spot for Gateway 2000's. I am actually in the process of restoring my collection of Gateway 2000 systems to add to my "weekly build" series! I have the following Gateway 2000 systems:

Gateway 2000 4DX2/66 slim desktop
Gateway 2000 P5-60 Desktop #1
Gateway 2000 P5-60 Desktop #2
Gateway 2000 P5-75 Desktop
Gateway 2000 P5-75 Full Tower

Unfortunately, the soldered Dallas RTC in a couple of these is shot and I'd need to either coin-mod or resolder, but otherwise they are all great and definitely hold some nostalgic value to me!

Your Dallas RTC is not socketed?! That's surprising. My P4D-66 Gateway 2000 tower has a socket for it. The RTC is still available too. 😀 I have a pretty new one in mine, and it's been keeping excellent time.

Both of my desktop Gateway 2000s just use an external battery pack. Not that I mind. Seems easier to maintain. 😀

Billyray520 wrote:

Your Dallas RTC is not socketed?! That's surprising. My P4D-66 Gateway 2000 tower has a socket for it. The RTC is still available too. 😀 I have a pretty new one in mine, and it's been keeping excellent time.

Just checked and I'm pretty sure it's soldered. Any idea if this board has a 4-pin battery header? I don't see anything obvious..

My others:

When I was a kid, the day care I went to had a Gateway 2000. It was a piece of shit that constantly locked up.

My grandfather (my fathers father) had a gateway but it was one of the later ones with the cow motif. I was always dazzled by his setup since it was more powerful than my fathers Packard Bell and he had invested in some serious sound hardware. I remember some sort of Dinosaur educational program that was super cool with digitized sound and stuff. The sound was so FULL and HUGE, it was just amazing.

i can almost get nostalgic with some of the photographic shots and the pics of the desktop with old software then i remember how slow the gateway 2000 i used was. The one computer i remember blowing me away was the "new" computer the daycare purchased, which knowing what i know now is a computer built and sold to and for the day care by the computer shop i now work at. it blew the gateway out of the water and played all the games we could throw at it.

Artex wrote:

Billyray520 wrote:

Your Dallas RTC is not socketed?! That's surprising. My P4D-66 Gateway 2000 tower has a socket for it. The RTC is still available too. 😀 I have a pretty new one in mine, and it's been keeping excellent time.

Just checked and I'm pretty sure it's soldered. Any idea if this board has a 4-pin battery header? I don't see anything obvious..

You probably could desolder it and add a socket so you can change it if needed. Also, I don't think motherboards with RTCs even have battery headers. Not typically. Since the battery inside the RTC is connected internally.

The usual "fix" is to modify them by getting to the necessary pins to solder wires onto.

ReeseRiverson wrote:

Artex wrote:

Billyray520 wrote:

Your Dallas RTC is not socketed?! That's surprising. My P4D-66 Gateway 2000 tower has a socket for it. The RTC is still available too. 😀 I have a pretty new one in mine, and it's been keeping excellent time.

Just checked and I'm pretty sure it's soldered. Any idea if this board has a 4-pin battery header? I don't see anything obvious..

You probably could desolder it and add a socket so you can change it if needed. Also, I don't think motherboards with RTCs even have battery headers. Not typically. Since the battery inside the RTC is connected internally.

The usual "fix" is to modify them by getting to the necessary pins to solder wires onto.

Yep, I'll probably do a socket so I don't have to ever desolder again.

Artex wrote:

Yep, I'll probably do a socket so I don't have to ever desolder again.

By the way, those Gateways you showed pictures of are all awesome. 😀

Here is what I did to an RTC chip on one computer... it was a pain, but it worked out in the end. 🤣

ReeseRiverson wrote:

Artex wrote:

Billyray520 wrote:

Your Dallas RTC is not socketed?! That's surprising. My P4D-66 Gateway 2000 tower has a socket for it. The RTC is still available too. 😀 I have a pretty new one in mine, and it's been keeping excellent time.

Just checked and I'm pretty sure it's soldered. Any idea if this board has a 4-pin battery header? I don't see anything obvious..

You probably could desolder it and add a socket so you can change it if needed. Also, I don't think motherboards with RTCs even have battery headers. Not typically. Since the battery inside the RTC is connected internally.

The usual "fix" is to modify them by getting to the necessary pins to solder wires onto.

That's what I would do too! 😎 I like your pics Artex! My Gateway 2000 P4D-66 is from 2-95; what year is your Tower P5-75? Are those 486's or Pentiums?

Here's mine before I upgraded the sram. You can see the soldered in "issi" 128k at the bottom right, to the left of the open sockets (which now have the additional "issi" 128k for 256k total L2 cache) I also added new parity RAM for 128 MB after this shot was taken. You can see the 486 ZIF socket and passive heat sink. I also removed the 14.4k modem at the bottom. (Windows 95b) The new Dallas RTC is just visible in the upper right corner.

Here's the case: Not a bad computer in its day (Windows 3.1 - early '95)

ReeseRiverson wrote:

Absolutely no cache... no tag ram... nothing of the sort.

So won't this basically behave like a 386 or something?

Not really. 486s only get really slow when you disable the internal cache. Having no external cache will make it a little bit slower in some applications, but you won't notice a difference. That said, a SX-25 is really slow even by 486 standards 🤣

ReeseRiverson wrote:

Should I consider adding cache/Tag? And what would be compatible with this board?

It won't make this PC run Doom any better if you add cache, but this being an OEM machine you probably need very specific chips with the right capacity and speed rating. If you have other 486 motherboards with cache chips installed you could try those chips. I don't think it will do any harm, but I won't refund you if it does 😉

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

I take it the onboard video uses up 1MB?

Onboard video cards in the 486 era were just plain regular video cards soldered to the motherboard, complete with their own RAM chips. AFAIK the concept of shared memory was introduced much later, probably only when AGP boards started appearing. In fact you can see the WDC video chip next to 8 smaller RAM chips near the VGA connector on the first picture.

ReeseRiverson wrote:

Here is what I did to an RTC chip on one computer... it was a pain, but it worked out in the end. 🤣

It's hard to tell from the pic, Did you just add the battery voltage to two pins? That's a lot easier than desoldering it. 😎