Need some advice

Okay so i aquired this old school gateway pc from my parents.

Its a
533mhz celeron processor
3gig hard drive
32 mb ram

now i want to buy some parts of ebay maybe, and soup it up a tiny bit, so it runs faster and my sister can use it on the internet to keep intouch with my family.

some one told me that the system bios might not beable to handle to much.

any suggestions?

 

If you could get the model number i might be able to find out how much that system can hold.

You probly could upgrade the memory to 128 or 256 and get a bigger Hard drive.

That would make a good system to surf the net, and do some word porcessing ect.

 

awesome! im eager to learn new things. hehe, i can work on my car just fine, but computer towers are a diff story..hahaha

here is the bios
404CL0X0.15A.0006.P02

 

I have a 20GB HDD, maybe you want to buy it?
$40 USD.

 

thanks for the offer beermonkey, i need to see what the limits are on this bios first...

 

if you can give us the model number on the case, we can tell you all you'd need to know. basically... what kind of gateway is it

 

G6-333c?

when overcooked first asked, i thought he was asking for the system bios number. So he could tell me how much the bios can handle.

 

no worries

turns out gateway has a more complicated support system.

you should have a 9 - 12 digit serial number somewhere on the tower, that will give us your exact system specs, as they seem to have made a number of different combinations all called the G6-333c.

if you can find it, were in.

 

0011875392

haha!

and the only other number is my customer number, so i doubt that one can help, ROFL

 

Go download Everest Home Edition it will tell you more than you want to know about your computer. hehe Very simple to use.

It'll show the Motherboard type, CPU ( Processor ) type plus Memory type & amount installed.

 

yes, Everest and AIDA are nice tools to know what you HAVE, but dont always let you know what you CAN have upgrade wise. i'll post back in a minute with your systems capabilities

 

ok, for Memory... Memory Upgrade Information
System Serial Number: 0011875392
Motherboard Part Number: 4000335
Type of Memory Modules (shipped):
32-MB 100Mhz 64Bit 4-clock CL=2 SDRAM UNBUFFERED DIMM

Number of Memory Slots on Board: 2 (2 banks of 1)

Maximum Amount / Type of RAM that can be Installed:
512MB SDRAM, PC100

These can be expensive... but i'd recommend no less than 256MB nowadays

I am not seeing any limit on hard drive size, so I am assuming you should be fine adding or upgrading to a nice sized hard drive.

 

I'm not clear on how old the BIOS is. Given PC100 memory, you're probably OK -- but it wasn't long before the advent of PC100 memory that the BIOS couldn't support a hard drive larger than 8.4GB.

Some of those machines wouldn't see anything more than the first 8.4GB of a hard drive; others couldn't see a large drive at all. Hopefully, you won't have to worry about that. If it is an issue, a drive overlay (eg., MaxBlast or Ontrack) can often deal with it.

 

the latest BIOS released for the board is 4/7/1999 available for download here
http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/getFile.asp?id=14888&uid=5942116

I also found a tech support document on this motherboard/model addressing a 75GB hard drive, and the response indicating it should format just fine. good news!

 

Nice find man. I'm running an 80gig HD on an older Gateway PII450 MB with no probs, had a 120gigger on there at one point.

Be careful when Flashing the BIOS. One little mistake & you could render the MB useless.

 

*absolutely* listen to what suesman said.

even the BIOS page says you must use a IBM PRE-FORMATTED floppy when flashing those BIOS, not one formatted in win2000/nt/xp. it shouldnt have any problems, but always watch your back!

 

okay, so remember im noob to this kinda stuff..

1. what does flashing the bios mean?

2. im assuming its not plug and play, and will prob have to upgrade to windows Xp...

 

Okay well ill have to do what "intheyearstocome" said, and download the bios update for the computer, and slowly gather my parts. After i install the parts. do they install them alone or do i need to go download some more shit?

 

Ok I have an older gateway board with a 533 celeron on it. Sounds pretty much like the same deal. Mine is pc 133 ram. I have a 40 gig drive in it and 384mb ram running windows xp. I haven't flashed the bios since I don't want to mess the board up and it doesn't seem to need it anyhow. Computer runs flawlessly, I am even using it to run a small Nascar 2003 server. I would definately make sure what speed the ram is at though. Atleast buy a stick of 128mb and ditch the 32. As far as the new stuff installing itself, you should be fine. It should pick everything right up and only require a reboot.

 

Okay! thanks alot kc2hse! All this computer lingo is confusing to me, so i had to go to www.howstuffworks.com to learn more in depth tower knowledge....................

Now if we were talking Hondas(dont flame me plez) i know alot of shit on swapping motors..haha

 

NP!!! and I have an 82 Suzuki i could use some help rebuilding. Take care

 

well i know i have this board, Intel Pentium II Slot 1 LX MicroATX Motherboard, but i cant figure it out in the intel list.. my AA number is 719638-184.... weird maybe im just plain stupid.

 

Also, is 168 pin pc100 sdram okay? or do i need a different pin number?

 

Hello, I just ran across this thread from a Google search, as I am having the same dilemma, but I've already installed my hard drive.

The problem is, it will only "see" up to a certain amount of space on it. Just a bit over 2GB, which isn't very much. I tried to update the BIOS doing everything they said (including new IBM pre-formatted diskettes), but it wouldn't let me. All I got told was to remove the non-system disk when I rebooted (following the instructions).

Any advice?

 

2.1GB is all you can see? And you have a reasonably current BIOS?

Let em take a guess: you're using a FAT16 format, and haven't partitioned the hard drive you want to use.

The 2.1GB "barrier" may be a filesystem limitation, not a BIOS limitation. The FAT16 filesystem is limited to 2^16, or 65,536 file allocation units. It can't provide an allocation unit larger than 32KB. That limits the maximum partition size to 2.1GB.

You'll find some more information on hard drive capacity barriers here.

If I'm right, you have a couple of choices. Convert to a FAT32 format (Windows 95B and later includes a conversion utility), or partition the drive using partitions that are no larger than 2.1GB.

The FAT32 filesystem (with the current ATA standard) will let you use drives up to 137GB. It also keeps the allocation unit size at 4KB up to a 8GB partition size.

Retaining the FAT16 filesystem and using multiple partitions is less than ideal, because you end up breaking the available space up into 2.1GB chunks, which can be inconvenient. You'll also get extremely inefficient use of the available space because of the very large (32KB) allocation unit size.

If I've guessed wrong, tell us a little more about the system you're working with. Here's what would be helpful:

• your system's operating system
• the filesystem you're using (FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, etc.)
• date of your machine's BIOS
• size of the hard drive
• date of manufacture of the hard drive

All of these can have a bearing on your problem.

 

Thanks for the help.

I've formated the drive as NTFS and now it sees everything. It's a 20 GB drive, which is why I was perplexed as it "seeing" only 2 GB. I've also installed Windows 2000 on it (very nice, much better than XP IMO). I've been wondering what is wrong with the next part: the monitor has only been seeing 16 colors. So to combat the problem, I purchased a new video card and a new monitor, and it still can only see 16 colors. Only one improvement with the new video card: 800x600 instead of only 640x480. Any suggestions as to how to remedy this?

 

Make sure you have the correct drivers for the video card. Go to the manufacturers website (typically www.ati.com or www.nvidia.com) and get the latest drivers.

If its XP/2000, current drivers should be fine, no matter how old the card is. But I'd check the supported card list just in case.

 

Ok just a thought on flashing the BIOS. Try calling Gateway support. I can still to this day call them up & they will walk me threw just about anything I might be having an issue with. Worth a shot.