Gateway motherboard limits?

I have an old Gateway GP6-400c that I'd like to upgrade. The current processor is socket 370, 400Mhz Celeron, 66fsb. The support site mentions that "if the processor is upgraded ..." which suggests that it can be upgraded. So I got a socket 370, 766 Celeron, 66 MHz processor. I flashed the BIOS first. But when I put the in new processor and turn on the surge protector, all I get is the power light and hard drive light...nothing else.
Gateway support says the motherboard can't take it.
According to the Gateway site, the motherboard is an Intel (Freeman) ZX Motherboard 400MHz Celeron™ R1.
I put in more ram and that's been accepted and I've also got a new hard drive for it but that's not been installed yet.
Any suggestions? Comments? All appreciated. Thanks.

 

If you put in a new cpu...you have to reset the cmos!! Take out the baterry with the power unplugged for a good 2 minutes, then try to reboot!!

But like you said...if the motherboard limit doesn't support that cpu then it won't make any difference, but it is worth a try!! You might get lucky!!

Did you flash the bios with the new cpu in, or did you do it with the old cpu in?? Reason I asked...The system shouldn't boot AT ALL if the motherboard doesn't support the cpu!!

Roger

 

I flashed the bios with the old processor because it won't boot with the new processor. Is there a way to find out the limit of the board?
I'll go and try to cmos first.

 

Obviously, I've never replaced a processor before, so bear with me. Pulling the cmos battery occurred to me, but when I searched for instructions I did not see anything about it. Thanks for the info.

 

I pulled the battery and let it sit a few minutes. Still won't boot. So I guess this processor won't work.

 

This is just an educated guess, but from looking at this list of gateway models, ( http://dealram.com/include/syspicker/syspicker_detail.html?v=mfg&mfg_id=15 ) the GP6s only go up to 667 and 633c (c for Celeron) so I'd guess that a 633c is the best you could do. You might be able to get a P3 667 (Not a Celeron) which would be a good performance gain. Going from a 400 Celeron to a 700 Celeron you won't really notice much of a difference anyway. However, going from a 400 Celeron to a P3 667, you might notice a good bit of performance increase.

 

Thank you! That's more information than Gateway wants to give me.

 

I see where you found that. I'm not experienced with this, but my ram is sdram, pc100 and I think that's the limit.

 

I've got another old Gateway with a 633 processor that can take a P3 processor. So, maybe I'll try switching them and see what happens. I know there won't be much gain in performance, but I'm curious.

 

Yeah, you might be able to use 100Mhz SDRAM. I can't say it will work though because all of the GP6s may not have the same motherboard.

P.S. - If you decide to try the 100Mhz bus, you'll need a processor clocked at that FSB too. i.e. - 500/550/600Mhz P3 with 100Mhz front side bus.

 

The ram spec is pc66 or pc100 sdram.
The processor is a Celeron, 66MHz fsb and Gateway only mentions this:

# Supports Mendocino PPGA processor types
# 370-pin socketed processors with integrated level 2 (L2) cache and 66-megahertz (MHz) front side bus
# Intel 82443ZX AGPset (440ZX). Support 100-MHz front side bus Celeron processors when available.

That's why I got a 66MHz fsb processor, but it doesn't work.
Anyway, the second Gateway has a different motherboard with a Celeron 633. The 370 socket can take PIII or Celeron. So, I thought I'd see if the 766 will work there.
btw, I put in the new hard drive on the 400 and it's working nicely.

 

Update: the Gateway 633 unit was able to take the 766 processor, so that's something, anyway.