Just so you know, 1.5x multiplier was NOT a typo. Socket 7 CPUs interpret the 1.5x setting as 3.5x.

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If you install Win 98 or 98SE.... IMPORTANT : NOTE that for Win 98 and 98SE need to use a special procedure to install Windows on a mboard with a 430FX chipset!! See this: http://www.lanyoncomputers.com.au/c... ..... Retail Upgrade versions of Win 98 or 98SE are not bootable. I don't think Retail Full versions are either. OEM versions, which are always full versions, are bootable. OEM versions have: "For Distribution with a New PC Only" printed on the original CD. If you have an Upgrade version, you will need to insert a CD of a previous version of Windows during Setup - e.g. a Win95 CD, point it to the \Win95 directory. ...... Copies of bootable CDs are most likely to be read properly on most CD drives if they are on a CD-R disk. Some old CD drives cannot read CD-RW disks, and some drives that can may not read a CD-RW made in another drive properly. ....... If you think your Windows CD version is bootable (you can confirm whether it is on a newer computer)........ Look in your bios Setup - In order to be able to boot with a bootable CD, you must be able to specify a CD drive in the boot order before a hard drive. Also, the CD drive you boot from must be able to recognize a bootable CD - some old CD drives cannot. ...... If you can't boot from a CD, with the Windows CD in the drive ..... - for Win 98, 98SE you should use a Win98 or 98SE Startup Disk, or if you have the original floppy that came with the CD, that is a slightly modified Startup Disk. Let it load cdrom support (the default), and when the loading has finished type Setup at the prompt. - for Win ME - ?? I don't recommend you using Win 2000 or XP since it appears the cpu on this mboard can run no faster than 200mhz. Both will be pokey in comparisin to Win 98/98SE/ME - for Win 2000, there is a utility on the CD that makes a four? floppy Setup set. You can make that set, on another computer if necessary, boot with the first one on your computer, load it and the other floppy contents, and at that point you can run Setup from the CD. - for Win XP, you can go to the Microsoft site, on another computer if necessary get a 6 floppy Setup set download for XP, boot with the first one on your computer, load it and the other floppy contents, and at that point you can run Setup from the CD. ............. 1.00.xx.CN0T - Gateway OEM version of Intel Thor Intel Thor Gateway Motherboard P5-75 TO P5-166 "CNOT" BIOS Gateway No 4000261 , 4000117 Manufacturer Intel for Gateway http://www.pcpartsohio.com/gateway_... Intel Thor M/B 82430FX w/P200MMX http://www.factorydirect.ca/cgi-bin... From that and other "hits" it appears top cpu speed for this mboard is 200mhz. 1.00.xx.CN0T Gateway OEM version of Intel Thor 1.00.xx.CN0 Advanced/ATX (Thor) Take a look at this - it may be the same as your mboard, except yours has a Gateway bios version, or you have have a slightly newer version or revision of this: Intel manual - Advanced/ATX baseboards http://www.x86.org/ftp/manuals/moth... page 19 of the pdf - J10C - "Reserved" is 3X on your revision/version?? same page - 66mhz fsb max. *************************************************

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"OEM versions have: "For Distribution with a New PC Only" printed on the original CD." The 98 and 98SE OEM CDs I have have no graphics on them, just printing. Newer 98SE CDs have graphics/holograms on them, and I'm not sure if "For Distribution with a New PC Only" is printed on them, but there should be something on it that is similar. "- for Win ME - ??" I have installed ME only once, from the ME CD. Most people prefer Win 98SE over Win 98, and 98SE over ME. You can't update 98 to be 100% the same as 98SE; you can't get 98 drivers for some newer devices. There are some devices that no ME drivers were ever made for and won't work in ME with 98 or 98SE drivers - check out whether you can get ME drivers for the devices you want to use - if you can you may want to try it. If you have old Dos games or other old programs that require Dos support, it is much easier to get them to work in 98 or 98SE - MSDos mode is crippled in ME. On the other hand, ME has a lot more drivers for devices built in than 98 or 98SE does. Win 98 and 98SE will rull very well with 128mb; I recommend 96mb minimum - in tests I determined with less ram than that the hard drive can't achieve it's full maximum speed; ME runs as well with a little more, say, 32mb more, 160mb.

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"Win 98 and 98SE will rull very well with 128mb" That's true, but you're not taking the cache limitations of the FX chipset into consideration. If more than 64MB RAM is installed, the performance will decrease because the cache is taken completely out of the picture & the RAM is read from directly...this is MUCH slower than using the cache. The only time exceeding the 64MB limit is recommended is if memory intensive apps are being used & the system has to continually resort to using virtual memory. Using virtual memory is even slower than direct use of the RAM, so adding more RAM would be justifiable, but really it's just a case of going with the lesser of two evils. "Intel's popular 430FX ("Triton I"), 430VX (one of the "Triton II"s, also called "Triton III") and 430TX chipsets, do not cache more than 64 MB of main memory. There are millions and millions of these PCs on the market. If you put more memory in a system than can be cached, the result is a performance decrease. The speed differential between the cache and memory is significant; that's why we use it. :^) When some of that memory is not cached, the system must go to memory for every access to that uncached memory, which is much slower. In addition, when using a multitasking operating system (pretty much anything other than DOS these days) you can't really control what ends up in cached memory and what ends up in non-cached memory..." http://www.pcguide.com/ref/mbsys/ca...

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I have 128mb of RAM which the PC recognizes. And in the BIOS, CD-ROM is the first boot device. On the motherboard: Multipliers: 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, RSVD Frequency: 50, 60, 66, RSVD 1.5 is actually 1.5, not 3.5, and I don't know what RSVD means. There are some other jumpers that say: PSWD: DIS, ENA Setup: DIS, ENA CMOS: CLR, Keep SCLK: 1/3, 1/4 (I don't understand this one) There is another jumper that says: VRE STD The only sticker on the motherboard says: 1T1JP 9651 The 2 chipsets say: Intel PCIset SB82437FX66 L6475018 SZ999 and Intel PCIset SB82371FB L6462261 SZ997 It is Gateway and says AmiBIOS I thought I could run XP because XP's minimum requirements are a 266Hhz and 64mb RAM and I've heard other people running XP on systems less than this.

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On the side of the case I noticed some numbers: Gateway 0006402140 PC EMP00475972 0060974D1A29

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"1.5 is actually 1.5, not 3.5" The setting is interpretted by the CPU, not the motherboard. If you have the proper CPU, 1.5x will be "seen" as 3.5x. It works for *most* Intel & AMD socket 7 CPUs, except lowend models (less than 166MHz), & there are *some* Intel models that are locked. You never did say what CPU you have. The socket 7 Intel 266MHz MMX was a bit of a rarity, unless you have a mobile/laptop CPU. I believe the Intel MMX desktop line all ran at 2.8v...if you have a mobile version, the voltage would be lower. But there were also IBM/Cyrix S7 CPUs, & they were "Performance Rated". The PR266 IBM/Cyrix was actually clocked at 208, 225, or 233MHz with a FSB of either 66, 75 or 83MHz, depending on the version. And of course, there's also the AMD K5, K6, & K6-2. "I don't know what RSVD means" RSVD = Reserved

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Searched for: thor on the Gateway web site This is probably why XP quits when you try to install it!! According to this, the Thor mboard cannot support Win ME, 2000, and XP. I would guess this is because the bios and mboard do not have compatiple ACPI support, or some other bios feature is not compatible or is missing, which is the case for a lot of old mboards. http://support.gateway.com/s/MOTHER... ....... The only download for Advanced/ATX (Thor) still on the Intel site is this - the last bios update, 1.00.0.6 CNO: http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scr... So if there is any bios update for the Gateway version of the bios, it would be unlikely that it would be any higher than 1.00.0.6 CNOT I do not recommend you use that. If the flashing does not flash the entire bios including the boot block portion, your mboard may not boot after you flash the bios. The files in that are dated 9/27/96. Going by that date and previous findings..... If it is based on an Award bios version, it can't support the recognition of hard drives larger than 8.4gb because of bugs in the Award code. If it is based on an AMI bios version, it probably cannot support the recognition of hard drives larger than 32gb because of bugs in the AMI code. The same is probably true for the bios version you alreay have. In the Advanced/ATX manual I pointed you to, I found it has an AMI bios. Therefore, there is probably no bios update that will support the recognition of drives larger than 32gb, even if you can find one. ......... ""1.5 is actually 1.5, not 3.5"" "The setting is interpretted by the CPU, not the motherboard. If you have the proper CPU, 1.5x will be "seen" as 3.5x. It works for *most* Intel & AMD socket 7 CPUs," I believe that can be true only for K6 cpu's, maybe some Cyrix cpus. K6-2 cpu's interpret X2 as X6, but this mboard can't support the core voltage they need, or the current required. I doubt this mboard can handle anything other than Intel cpus.

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Check some old S7 boards. The jumper settings for 1.5x & 3.5x are the same. Some boards list them separately, others list them combined...1.5x/3.5x That's what was "special" about the Pentium-1 233MMX CPU. It allowed people with older boards to upgrade to the fastest CPU available at the time, w/o having to upgrade the board...simply by using the "1.5x = 3.5x" trick. Obviously the board would also need to support the proper vcore settings, plus it had to support "dual voltage" CPUs. The "2x = 6x" trick for the K6-2 could also be used on older socket 7 boards, provided they met the voltage requiremets. That meant that 400MHz (6 x 66mhz) or 450MHz (6 x 75MHz) was a possibility.

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"The jumper settings for 1.5x & 3.5x are the same. Some boards list them separately, others list them combined...1.5x/3.5x" I've fiddled with a lot of old Socket 7 mboards, and have looked at many manuals for them, and have never encountered that. The bios of the mboard has to be compatible with a K6-2 cpu (or a K6 or Cyrix cpu for that matter) on old mboards, even if the mboard meets other requirements. I have an Evergreen Spectra - a cpu socket adapter with onboard voltage regulator that comes a K6-2 400mhz cpu that allows many Socket 5 and 7 mboards to run at 400mhz (6 X 66mhz), but not all old mboards will handle the current required. It comes with a CD full of bios updates, and will test the bios and install an update if required. Powerquest had a similar cpu upgrade but did not include bios updates - the bios of the mboard has to be comptible.

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The CPU is a Pentium MMX FV80503233 SL27S 2.8v Malay L818607-0107

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I'm going to put on 98se and see how that goes. But, as I was prying off the heatsink with a screwdriver and pliers, I shattered a resistor on the mobo closest to the CPU. It still seems to bootup OK. What will this affect?

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I tried to put my 98se Startup disk in but it gives me the "NTDLR is missing". It does this even when there is no disk or CD in any drive. So now I have to get around this.

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Since the gateway motherboard is still inside the gateway case (a fact that should have been initially disclosed) there should be a serial number on the back of the case as well as the side. I ran the '0006402140' number in the gateway support link above as it had the form of their serial numbers but nothing was found that was associated with that number. Or your system is so old that gateway isn't listing support for them. But you may want to click on the 'how do I find my serial number link' on that same page. I found some gateway Thor part numbers here: http://www.skyline-eng.com/catalog/... and plugged them into the 'part number' locater but again found nothing so I think gateway has dropped active support for it. However there is still a bios upgrade for Thor motherboards on their FTP site: ftp://ftp.gateway.com/pub/hardware_support/bios/pentium/thor/ Also, if you can find an intel bios upgrade for that board you can usually force the upgrade using the 'recovery' mode. Otherwise the intel upgrade won't work because the bios is branded as a gateway.

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I set the bootup to floppy only and first. Now it says "insert bootable media in the proper drive" as it reads A:\ Maybe I should just get a better motherboard that supports all the stuff I connected it to: 2 gig drive floppy CD-ROM 128 (32mb x 4) EDO RAM ATX power supply Pentium 266Mhz CPU 4mb PCI video card Any suggestions for a board with this material?

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Welcome to the I-screwed-up-my-motherboard-when-I-removed-the-heatsink club. Best to replace the busted item if possible. The 'NTLDR missing' probably means you're attempting to boot form the HD instead of the floppy.

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Yeah, the obvious thing to do is get a better motherboard. You may have a problem getting one to fit in the existing case as the rear connections of your existing one are non-standard.

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"The CPU is a Pentium MMX FV80503233" The CPU is 233MHz, not 266MHz. The correct jumper settings are 1.5 x 66MHz. You're getting the "NTDLR is missing" because you didn't properly format the HDD. Since you attempted to install XP on it, it's probably NTFS & Win98 can't use NTFS...you need to format as FAT32.

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"Some boards list them separately, others list them combined...1.5x/3.5x"" "I've fiddled with a lot of old Socket 7 mboards, and have looked at many manuals for them, and have never encountered that" Sorry, but I gotta prove you wrong. I've got quite a collection of socket 7 boards, not to mention others. Here's a quick pic I just snapped showing the 1.5/3.5: http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i...

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jam It dawned on me what you were getting at with the 1.5X /3.5X thing. It's true some mboards have that labelling, on the mboard and/or in the manual, but the 3.5X only applies to certain cpus - the K6's I believe. Similarly, X2 could be labelled 2X/6X on later socket 7 mboards, the X6 applying only to e.g. K6-2's, but I haven't seen that myself. The jumper on the mboard being 1.5X or 2X doesn't change - the difference is there is a multiplier within the cpu package on certain cpus, such as K6s and K6-2s. "The CPU is 233MHz, not 266MHz. The correct jumper settings are 1.5 x 66MHz." He's going to get 100mhz from that cpu. That cpu does not have an multiplier within the cpu package. I confirmed that in a mboard manual. ... raiden1701 "I shattered a resistor on the mobo closest to the CPU. " This mboard is old enough it may have a conventional discrete resistor with wire leads, e.g. one end in the mboard, the other a loop from the top to the mboard, rather than the resistors on newer mboards that are flat rectangles soldered flat to the mboard that have no leads. If so, all you need to do is replace it with one of the same physical size or larger that has the same colored stripes on it, which identify it's tolerance (e.g. within + or - 5%)and it's resistive value (size in ohms). Are you sure it was a resistor? E.g. If it is a flat disk it's a ceramic capacitor, which has it's value marked on its side(s). If you're going to install Win 98 or 98SE see the first part of response 8 and the link I pointed to! If you don't want a big puzzle to figure out you must remove all your cards except the video card and follow that procedure!! See the last link in response 8 - that manual probably applies to your mboard!

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I took Electronics in high school (although didn't pay much attension) and I believe it was a resistor I broke. It is a small flat rectangle, I wouldn't be able to find a replacement for it around here. So far it hasn't impacted anything (yet). I tried all combos with the jumpers and the highest I got was 200Mhz with settings: clock: 66 freq: RSVD When set both sets of jumpers to RSVD, it only shows 66Mhz and doesn't recongise the mouse or keyboard. Seems strange. I looked at the manual from Response 8 and it doesn't mention a CPU with less than 3.135V, but mine is 2.8V (should I reposition the Voltage jumper?). By the way, THANKS tons for all the help you guys have given me!!!!!!

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raiden1701 Why did you want to update the bios? If it was to support larger hard drives, the update DAVEINCAPS found won't help. The bios update download 1003cn0t.exe here has bios update files dated 10/10/96 within it. See 1003cn0t.txt for info about what it updates. ftp://ftp.gateway.com/pub/hardware_support/bios/pentium/thor/ (DAVEINCAPS - good find!) See Response 14 for why this bios update will probably not support the recognition of hard drives larger than 32gb.

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I only wanted to update the BIOS for XP, but I think I'm only going to install 98se due to that the motherboard won't work well with XP.

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But I can't even install 98se because the PC keeps telling me to install a valid bootup disk even though I insert several versions of the 98se startup disk and have tried many bootup configs.

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Sorry to bother you guys with old crappy hardware, it's just that I like to keep old stuff going so it doesn't go to waste!

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Locally here in my town of 10,000, I am the cheapest way of helping the locals with their old PC's (charging only $20 for 15 hours of work!).

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"the 3.5X only applies to certain cpus - the K6's I believe" It definitely applies to the Pentium 233MMX, but it was a crap-shoot with the 166MMX & 200MMX...some worked, some didn't. It also works with K6/K6-2's depending on the default clock speed. "That cpu does not have an multiplier within the cpu package. I confirmed that in a mboard manual." It seems to me it would have to work. The "1.5x = 3.5x" is programmed into the CPU itself, not the board. If the board has the 1.5x multiplier setting as an option & this CPU is in fact a 233MMX, I don't see how it can't work? "I looked at the manual from Response 8 and it doesn't mention a CPU with less than 3.135V, but mine is 2.8V" Run it at 3.135v for any length of time & it will fry. Did you try the multiplier at 1.5x & the CPU ran at 100MHz??

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The Voltage jumper is set for VRE which I believe is good. Something else good: Jumpers set to 66 freq and 1.5 multiplier make 233Mhz for some reason. So that means that the 1.5 is also 3.5. It still doesn't reach the advertised 266Mhz but it is close enough!!!!!!!

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This is all good, but I still need the PC to read my 98 Startup disk to install 98. I think the NTDLR error was caused because I had XP on this 2gb drive before. But aside from that I still get the "put in proper boot disk" when I startup with the floppy.

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The CPU is NOT a 266MHz! You listed the markings in response #17: The CPU is a Pentium MMX FV80503233 SL27S 2.8v Malay L818607-0107 Look closely at the last 3 numbers in "FV80503233". The CPU is a 233, NOT a 266! I already said that in response #24. If you don't wanna take my word for it, maybe this will convince you: http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Penti... "I think the NTDLR error was caused because I had XP on this 2gb drive before" Exactly! It appears that you didn't properly format the drive for Win98...if you did, you wouldn't be getting a message about NTDLR. Pop in the WinXP CD, delete the partiton, create a new partiton, then format the drive using FAT32. Once that's done, cancel out of the XP installation. Try a creating a new Win98 boot disk: http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

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"I took Electronics in high school (although didn't pay much attension) and I believe it was a resistor I broke. It is a small flat rectangle,..." Oh. If it's flat to the mboard you're probably right. It probably doesn't have a code on it that would be easy to decipher, even if you can still read it. In that case, can you press the pieces together and put an ohmeter across it's ends and get a guess-timate of it's resistance? If you can, you could solder a regular resistor of about that value in place of it. To get the old pieces off is easy, just heat it up and flick it away, but try not to use too much heat or leave the soldering iron in one place too long or you may unsolder nearby components - those flat rectangles are very difficult to solder by hand. Use as small a wattage of soldering iron as you can. If all you have is a soldering gun, that's way too much wattage - borrow a soldering iron, or buy one - some dollar stores have them if you're miserly. "I tried all combos with the jumpers and the highest I got was 200Mhz with settings:" I assume the highest was with the multiplier jumpers in the positions shown as Reserved in the manual I pointed to. Sometimes later versions of a mboard will have a use for such, or the capabilty was aleady there but there were no cpus that could use that multiplier at the time that particular mboard version was made. E.g. I recall there was a delay between 166 and 200 mhz cpus coming out at that time, and another delay before MMX cpus came out. "When set both sets of jumpers to RSVD, it only shows 66Mhz and doesn't recongise the mouse or keyboard. Seems strange." Sometimes the ones marked that way aren't connected or are shorting something. "I looked at the manual from Response 8 and it doesn't mention a CPU with less than 3.135V, but mine is 2.8V (should I reposition the Voltage jumper?)." Ew. That's right - MMX cpus use a lower voltage. See page 19 in the pdf and thereabouts - set it to standard voltage if it isn't already set to that so it's as low as it will go. Two ways to go..... 1. it may still be okay as long as it doesn't get too hot. Your cpu may have a heatsink, usually one that is low profile which may or may not be clamped in place, or a dinky cpu fan, usually without a heatsink. If it has a heatsink, after the computer has been on a while, say, 15 minutes, touch it - you should be able to hold your fingertip on it for a few seconds or longer before it becomes too uncomfortable to leave it there - if it's hotter than than that, you need more cooling. If it's too hot, the heatsink may be glued on, or thermal gfrease may have been used, or if thermal paste was used it may have dried out badly and it is as if it were glued. Warm up the cpu for a while, shut down the compouter, remove the power to the case, reve the clamp if there is one, press directly down on the heatsink and try to gently twist the heatsink off the cpu - if it won't twist it's probably glued. If it has thermal grease it will twist off easily. If it won't twist off, you'll need to mount a fan in the case somewhere blowing at the cpu - e.g. an 80mm case fan (it has to be bigger than a cpu fan if it not directly on the cpu). If it has a dinky cpu fan and no heatsink, after the computer has been on a while, say, 15 minutes, shut down the computer, remove the power to the case, and quickly remove the cpu fan - try the same fingertip test. If it's too hot, get a bigger cpu fan (more cfm). If it has a not so dinky cpu fan and a clamped heatsink meant for a faster cpu it should be fine. 2. There may be a way of reducing the voltage to the cpu core by rigging up resistors and tiny insulated wires to certain pin positions - you remove the cpu, connect the wiring, install the cpu again. If you want to try that, I know of a site that has such info. www.plasma-online.de Look on the left side. It may re-direct to a newer site.

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Last call.... - the CPU is a 233MHz MMX & it appears that you finally got it running at that speed by using the 1.5x multi (imagine that) - the NTDLR error means that the hard drive wasn't formatted correctly. Try again using the XP CD as I explained above. - check the BIOS & make sure the floppy is set as the 1st boot device. If necessary, create a new Win98 boot floppy.

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raiden1701 "The Voltage jumper is set for VRE which I believe is good." Nope. That's higher. You need to set it to Standard. See Response 37. jam "The "1.5x = 3.5x" is programmed into the CPU itself," raiden1701 "Jumpers set to 66 freq and 1.5 multiplier make 233Mhz for some reason. So that means that the 1.5 is also 3.5." jam You have bested me this time jam! So how come my Epox MVP3-G5 lists 233MMX as using X3.5? - that mboard doesn't have X1.5. Well, on the other hand K6-2 cpu's don't multiply the mboard multiplier by 3 when they are used with other than X2, so it must be programmed or toggled according to what frequency it senses rather than being hard wired within the cpu. The 233MMX must be able to set itself to X3.5 overall when the mboard is set to X1.5, and turn off it's internal multiplier when the mboard is set to X3.5. I didn't know the MMX cpus could do that! - now I know.

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"I took Electronics in high school (although didn't pay much attension) and I believe it was a resistor I broke. It is a small flat rectangle,..." Oh. If it's flat to the mboard you're probably right. It probably doesn't have a code on it that would be easy to decipher, even if you can still read it. In that case, can you press the pieces together and put an ohmeter across it's ends and get a guess-timate of it's resistance? If you can, you could solder a regular resistor of about that value in place of it. To get the old pieces off is easy, just heat it up and flick it away, but try not to use too much heat or leave the soldering iron in one place too long or you may unsolder nearby components - those flat rectangles are very difficult to solder by hand. Use as small a wattage of soldering iron as you can. If all you have is a soldering gun, that's way too much wattage - borrow a soldering iron, or buy one - some dollar stores have them if you're miserly. "I tried all combos with the jumpers and the highest I got was 200Mhz with settings:" I assume the highest was with the multiplier jumpers in the positions shown as Reserved in the manual I pointed to. Sometimes later versions of a mboard will have a use for such, or the capabilty was aleady there but there were no cpus that could use that multiplier at the time that particular mboard version was made. E.g. I recall there was a delay between 166 and 200 mhz cpus coming out at that time, and another delay before MMX cpus came out. "When set both sets of jumpers to RSVD, it only shows 66Mhz and doesn't recongise the mouse or keyboard. Seems strange." Sometimes the ones marked that way aren't connected or are shorting something. "I looked at the manual from Response 8 and it doesn't mention a CPU with less than 3.135V, but mine is 2.8V (should I reposition the Voltage jumper?)." Ew. That's right - MMX cpus use a lower voltage. See page 19 in the pdf and thereabouts - set it to standard voltage if it isn't already set to that so it's as low as it will go. Two ways to go..... 1. it may still be okay as long as it doesn't get too hot. Your cpu may have a heatsink, usually one that is low profile which may or may not be clamped in place, or a dinky cpu fan, usually without a heatsink. If it has a heatsink, after the computer has been on a while, say, 15 minutes, touch it - you should be able to hold your fingertip on it for a few seconds or longer before it becomes too uncomfortable to leave it there - if it's hotter than than that, you need more cooling. If it's too hot, the heatsink may be glued on, or thermal gfrease may have been used, or if thermal paste was used it may have dried out badly and it is as if it were glued. Warm up the cpu for a while, shut down the compouter, remove the power to the case, reve the clamp if there is one, press directly down on the heatsink and try to gently twist the heatsink off the cpu - if it won't twist it's probably glued. If it has thermal grease it will twist off easily. If it won't twist off, you'll need to mount a fan in the case somewhere blowing at the cpu - e.g. an 80mm case fan (it has to be bigger than a cpu fan if it not directly on the cpu). If it has a dinky cpu fan and no heatsink, after the computer has been on a while, say, 15 minutes, shut down the computer, remove the power to the case, and quickly remove the cpu fan - try the same fingertip test. If it's too hot, get a bigger cpu fan (more cfm). If it has a not so dinky cpu fan and a clamped heatsink meant for a faster cpu it should be fine. 2. There may be a way of reducing the voltage to the cpu core by rigging up resistors and tiny insulated wires to certain pin positions - you remove the cpu, connect the wiring, install the cpu again. If you want to try that, I know of a site that has such info. www.plasma-online.de Look on the left side. It may re-direct to a newer site.

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Wierd! I thought I posted the contents of response 40 before 39, a lot more than 6 minutes apart!

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The 54C pentium processors had an I/O voltage of between 3.135 and 3.6 with a general setting of 3.3. The VRE processors had a range of 3.4 to 3.6. That's why the motherboards sometimes had a VRE jumper. The 55C processors were the MMX ones. They were dual voltage cpu's with an additional core voltage of 2.8. I'm kind of suprised that motherboard is seeing the cpu right. Is it identified as MMX on the posting screen? If that motherboard isn't MMX capable eventually it, the cpu or both will be ruined.

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Your right in that it is a 233Mhz. I'll change the voltage to Standard. I can't use the XP CD because the PC reads the CD and tells me to take it out. I set the floppy to be first and the PC tells me to insert a proper boot device.

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Either your bootdisk is bad, the floppy drive is bad, it's not connected right or it's misidentified in cmos.

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Actually now I set floppy first, then hard drive and I get the bloody "NTDLR is missing". I could put this hard drive to another PC and format it with Fat32 (with the startup disk) and see how that does.

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Although you've set the floppy first, either your floppy drive isn't being detected or the disk in it isn't detected. So the boot process goes on to the hard drive from where you get the error message. I suppose you could put the HD in another computer but fixing the floppy problem needs to be done eventually.

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If the floppy drive worked fine previously and you have not changed any connections, if the CD is before the floppy drive in the boot order in the bios setup, most if not all computer bioses can't boot a bootable floppy in that case - the floppy has to be before the CD drive. If you can set floppy drive first, CD drive second, hard drive third, you don't normally ever have to change it (you can't set that boot order in some older bioses). If you were fiddling with connections for the floppy drive: If the floppy led is on all the time one end of it's data cable is installed backwards. If it doesn't come on at all, either you don't have it set up as recognized properly in the bios (3 1/2" 1.44mb), you have it connected to the middle connector or to the wrong end connector instead of to the proper end one that has flipped wiring between it and the middle connector, you haven't got it correctly on the pins in the drive or the mboard (easy to do if there is no shroud around the pins), the drive is dead or does not have it's power connector plugged in or it's not on it's connector right (it's not hard to misalign it on the pins on some drives), or the data cable is damaged - look for broken wires at the edges of the cable at each connector or under the cable clamps there. If the led lights up briefly when you boot, and lights up again when trying to read the floppy, then goes out after a while, it's probably okay, and it's your boot disk that is the problem. If the led lights up briefly when you boot, and lights up again when trying to read the floppy, but the led stays on for a long time, or as long as the floppy is in the drive, the boot disk is really bad, or the drive is bad.

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Everything works well as you have described and I've used 2 known working 98 startup disks. But I will download another startup disk and try it. I does seem that the 2 disks are screwed up.

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I used a fully verified startup disk with floppy being the only bootup option and it still gives me the "insert proper bootup media" thing. Or the NTDLR thing. I don't know what the heck is going on!

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Can you just suggest a motherboard I can buy off Ebay that uses all the parts that I have?

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You might check in cmos and make sure the floppy controller is enabled and the drive is identified as 1.44. Otherwise the drive is probably bad or the broken resistor is at fault. A pentium II motherboard or even a good super socket 7 (a socket 7 board capable of up to 100 FSB) would work just fine. But as I mentioned above, the motherboard you have doesn't have the standard rear port arrangement. It's going to be hard to find a board that will match up with your existing KB, mouse, and serial and parallel port openings--assuming you plan on using the same case. Here's an ebay link for one of the Gateway Thor motherboards: http://cgi.ebay.com/Gateway-Intel-P... I assume the rear ports on yours are the same? You'd need something with that same arrangement. Or I guess you could order one of the ones being sold there. But if I were you I wouldn't spend $15 on a crappy P-I board plus whatever shipping this guy charges. I've got a bunch of P-II motherboards I'm going to junk for gold scrap. So if you decide on something like that let me know.

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I would like a slightly better motherboard. Right now I am installing 98se on the 2gig drive on my other 1400Mhz PC and then I'll see if the drive boots up on the other board. That board from Ebay is way to expensive for what it is. Maybe a PII board would be good. I'll get back to you with my results! Thanks again!!!!!!!

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I succesfully install 98se on my 2gig drive. I implanted that drive onto the main rig here. Win 98se loads but then won't detect my CD drive, and the device manager only detects: System adapters x3 and network adapters. It has a question mark beside: other adapters, Plug and Play BIOS (fail safe). Win 98se still loads up but is fairly useless. I don't know what to do about this. Maybe I'll buy a motherboard off you, DAVEINCAPS.

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When you install 98 one on PC and then put the HD in another, it'll boot up but as 98 finds all the new hardware it tries to install drivers for it. Unfortunately it doesn't ID the cdrom until later so it makes driver installation difficult. Usually the solution is to copy the WIN98 folder from the 98 cd onto the hard drive before swapping the drive. Then when 98 boots up the first time in the new PC and asks you to insert the 98 cd, you instead direct it to the location of the WIN98 folder you previously copied from the cd. It will find what it needs there. I can get you a P-II board but it won't have the same port configuration as your motherboard. (Yours is like the one in the ebay link, right?) So you'd probably need a different case.

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For the case thing, mine is like the Ebay link's board. In what way would the port config matter except for the port shield would be different? Is the shield really necessary? I subscribe to MaxPC, and they explained why a shield is necessay, buy I can't remember why.

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raiden1701 AS I TOLD YOU you back in response 8, and reminded you of in post since that one: If you install Win 98 or 98SE.... IMPORTANT : NOTE that for Win 98 and 98SE need to use a special procedure to install Windows on a mboard with a 430FX chipset!! See this: http://www.lanyoncomputers.com.au/c... The easiest way to fix your problem is install Windows again after removing all your cards except the video card, and fixing the I/O address mistake, then install your cards after thhe hard drtive controllers a CDRom drive show up!!

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In your existing PC case, if the back opening that holds the bracket--the shield I guess--is the standard size then you could just pop in a different one. But no, you wouldn't really need one. Although bugs, spiders even mice will crawl inside if you leave it open. I also can't be certain if the mounting holes (to screw the motherboard into the case) will be the same. Gateway is usually pretty good about using the standard ATX configuration but you've got an odd board and I can't be sure. I found one of these the other day. I haven't checked it out yet. The USB and KB/mouse ports are switched from the standard ATX but I have the shield. It (the shield) is made to fit the specific IBM case but you may be able to adapt it to your existing one. I could throw in the P-II 450 cpu and a 64 meg stick of RAM for a total of $10 plus postage. If it doesn't check out OK I'd just send something else. But it's sitting here loose now and I wouldn't have to strip it out of a case.

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I'd like a motherboard that could accept my 4 banks of EDO (32x4) and my 233 pentium mmx, if that could work for you.

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Yeah, I think so. It wouldn't be as good as a P-II though. Most of the P-I motherboards I have left are either the AT style--with the large KB port--or they're ATX like the P-II's but use SDRAM memory and not the SIMM you have. It wouldn't be practical to try to fit an AT motherboard in that case. What state or country do you live in?

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I live in lower east B.C., Canada. But I have an address Washington State. I would definetly need an ATX board with the EDO RAM support x 4.

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OK, I'll look around and see what I have. I'll try to do it tomorrow.

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raiden1701 After all these posts and all these people helping you you're giving up? If that's the case, guess whose posts I'm no longer going to answer!

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I'm not giving up. I would really like to know why this PC isn't booting of A:\!!!! And I also appreciate very, very much for all the input! I just thought that since it isn't booting off A:\ (and I haven't recieved the right reason it isn't yet) and the fact that I crushed a resistor, that maybe I should get another board.

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I would still like to use what I've got here. It all seems like it should work well together.

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A good board for you would be the FIC 503+. It was one of the hottest S7 boards available in the late 90's. It's based on the VIA MVP3 which is an excellent performer & it supports a variety of FSB speeds (66-100MHz+). It has an AGP slot & supports both 72-SIMMs & 184-pin DIMMs, so you can run your 233MMX CPU & EDO RAM for now, but you could upgrade to a K6-2 & PC100 RAM later. It can even run the CPU & RAM "async", so if you wanted to, you could keep your EDO RAM & run it at 66MHz, but install a K6-2 & run it at 100MHz. You won't find a more versatile S7 board. Here's a couple of old socket 7 articles that I have bookmarked from years ago: http://www.tomshardware.com/1998/07... http://www.tomshardware.com/2000/11...

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I looked around and couldn't find any ATX P-I motherboards that take SIMMS memory. I probably have 100 AT P-I motherboards that use SIMMS. I have a few Micron and Gateway ATX P-I motherboards that take SDRAM instead of SIMMS and I've got a P-II ATX board that does take SIMMS. It may be a Micron. Some of those used proprietary power supplies so I'd have to check to see if it works with a standard one. So it looks like I've got everything but what you wanted. Well, I did find what looks to be one of the Gateway Thor boards like yours. But it's been sitting outside in my scrap pile for quite awhile and may not be good. I noticed the Gateway part number was on a sticker on the side of one of the ISA slots. Let me know what you want to do. I'd throw in the Thor board in case you wanted to mess with it. If it wasn't any good you may be able to use it to replace the part on your board that was broken.

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The 503+ is an AT motherboard so I don't think it'd fit. Some of those super socket 7 boards like the ASUS P5A-B had both AT and ATX power connections but I'm not sure about the 503+. But even if the ATX power connection was an adavantage I don't think the mounting holes would match up. The Thor board I found looked to have the standard ATX mounting holes.

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ahhhhh, yes. The 503+ is an AT board. I overlooked that this board (Thor) is ATX. Nevermind!

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I am trying to read the stuff that tubesandwires told me to but it seems complex. The "plug and play bios fail safe" thing in Win 98's device manager is confusing me.

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"guess whose posts I'm no longer going to answer!" Don't tease. Just think, if you'd refrained from replying to this one, it'd be about 100,000 words shorter (and no worse for it) I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter

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Windows 98 wants bios.vxd from the 98se CD, but device manager is not displaying my CD drive so I can't do anything.

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You need to boot up the computer with a bootdisk. Choose cdrom support. Pay attention to the drive letter assigned to the cdrom. At the a:\> prompt type md c:\win98. Then put the 98 cd in the cdrom. Type copy X:\win98\*.* c:\win98 and enter, where X: is the cdrom drive letter shown when you booted with the bootdisk--Probably E: That will copy the necessary files to the hard drive. Then when 98 asks you to insert the 98 cd just click OK or next or whatever takes it to the next screen. It'll say it can't find the files and ask where else to look for them. Browse to the WIN98 folder on your hard drive and it'll find what it needs there.

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I am not able to do this because the PC still won't boot up from A:\ or CD drive.

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Now the BIOS won't recongnize my hard drive. At one point I had loaded with Safemode and Device Manager seemed to find everything all right, but only in Safemode.

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DAVEINCAPS, and whoever.... Advanced/ATX (Thor) manual here: http://www.x86.org/ftp/manuals/moth... raiden1701 "Now the BIOS won't recongnize my hard drive" If you haven't changed any connections or settings in the bios..... Check your hard drive. Since you have no working floppy drive you'll have to test it connected to another computer. See the latter part of response 1 in this: http://www.computing.net/windows95/... Failing power supplies are common and can cause your symptoms. Check your PS. See response 4 in this: http://www.computing.net/hardware/w... E.g. if the 5 volts is too low or not there the floppy and CD drive will not work properly. .......... This was supposed to be after Response 63 but my ISP was offline 5 hours till now: Please - if you have trouble keeping track, copy and paste what you need to , e.g. to a notepad file, and print it out! Floppy drive - check out the possibilities in Response 47. Another one - try removing the CD drive from the boot order in the bios, make the floppy drive first. If you don't have a bootable Win 98 CD you don't need that anyway. I have seen a few old computers that can't have both a bootable CD and a bootable floppy work if both are listed in the boot order, regardless of which order they are in. You could eliminate some of the possibilities simply by using a different floppy drive you know works, with a data cable you know works, from another computer. I have seen many cases where a floppy drive appears to be okay, it's led works, but it can't read anything - it's usually caused by damage from a failing PS(too much 5 volts or a short), a power spike or surge, way too much heat within the case, or from someone installing a mounting screw that is too long (over 1/4" or so of thread)or that is installed in the wrong place, which can touch circuits inside it and damage it. The floppy disks. If the floppy disk you were trying to boot the computer with now is truely faulty, it probably won't boot any computer - try it in another computer! Floppy disks made in one floppy drive do not always work in a different floppy drive. This is because of two main reasons: - floppy drives must be accurately aligned as to how they write to the disks. The alignnment of one floppy drive may be different from another, and even though the difference is not supposed to be significant in theory, sometimes it is significantly different. A newer floppy drive is more likely to be mis-aligned than an old one because there is little incentitive for quality control when the drives are as cheap as newer ones are. - for the same reason of there being no incentive for quality control these days, for low margin floppy disks, newer floppy disks, say, newer than 7 years old or so, are a lot more likely than in the past to have defective sectors on them that have not been identified when they were factory formatted, and a lot more likely to develop defective sectors after initial or susequent formatting - I have at least a hundred such defective more recent floppies. I've seen these defective floppies test fine, I install something on them such as boot disk files, then a short time later they will no longer boot a computer or some of the files cannot be read, or the computer or the operating system does not find that the disk has been formatted. When I test them again, they have a lot of defective sectors, or can't be read, or I re-format them and lots of defective sectors are there. For ANY newer floppy disk, I recommend you use Full format to check them out , especially if you use it for something more important such as a boot disk or a bootable flash floppy. E.g. In Win 95/98/98SE use Full format (RIGHT click on A: to find Format). In Win ME or XP, you can make a bootable floppy. FULL format is slower, but will find and exclude from use any previously undetected bad sectors on a floppy, a common problem these days. If you choose to use format a: in Dos (or format in Win XP), DO NOT use the Quick format switch, for the same reason. In Win 95/98/98SE you get a report page after formatting that will tell you if there are bad bytes/sectors on the disk. If there are, for a newer floppy, I recommend you don't use that floppy, at least not for anything you can't afford to lose - it often develops more bad bytes/sectors eventually. Format another floppy instead. I'm not sure if ME has a similar report page. XP and 2000 do not produce a report page - you have to select the floppy drive letter with that floppy in it, RIGHT click, look at Properties. The same may apply to ME. A good floppy has 1,457,664 bytes usable. Once you have determined the floppy has no bad bytes/sectors..... Then, if you need to make a win 98 or 98SE Startup disk, go to Control Panel - Add/Remove Programs - Startup Disk tab, on any computer that has the proper operating system. Or if you need to make a bootable floppy from some download or diskette creator file, do that with that good floppy. ........ raiden1701 In case it hasn't sunk in yet.... The problems you mention in response 53 are typical when installing Win 98 or 98SE on a mobard with a 430FX chipset, which is what this mboard has. For Win 98 and 98SE you need to use a special procedure to install Windows on a mboard with a 430FX chipset!! See this: http://www.lanyoncomputers.com.au/c... Now that Windows is messed up, the easiest way to fix most of your problems is to: - format the hard drive, by whatever means - e.g. with an XP boot disk - to FAT 32 - remove all your cards except the video card - install Windows again, by whatever means - Windows will have far fewer files you can't load near the end of Setup when it can no longer see the CD drive - Cancel each of those - fix the I/O address mistake, as in the above info - then install your cards after the all the hard drive controllers, dual fifo, and the CDRom drive show up!! - After you boot, Windows will then install what drivers it can for the cards - for cards Windows doesn't have drivers for, you'll have to figure what they need - we can help with that.

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- format the hard drive, by whatever means - e.g. by booting with a Windows XP CD - to FAT 32

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Hey Tubesandwires, I'll try your suggestions in the morning. I did set the floppy as the only boot device to no avail. It could be the drive because the disks work in my other PC. Your right about this chipset not working well with 98se. The PC also won't boot off my XP CD, but it will boot other bootable CD's like Memtest 86. I'll setup my drive on my other PC to test as well. Thanks for sticking with me!!!!

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77 responses - yikes! I didn't bother to read all of the responses but your opening inquiry (by itself) made me think you must have dabbled into this just for the heck of it - to begin with. ........."I've got an INTEL Socket 7 Mobo SB82437FX66 with a 266Mhz (on detects 200Mhz) with 128mb EDO RAM and a CD-ROM drive."...... OK, ain't nothing wrong with that. .........."When I put my XP Pro CD in, the computer says to take out the CD and restart (I'm trying to install XP on it). Why won't it let the XP CD boot?"........... You could have & should have called this whole thing off, right there & then. Oh well - live and learn Afterall, it's not like you'll be doing anything extra productive with XP Pro on the machine as opposed to maintaining 9X on it. How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

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Sabertooth According to this, the Thor mboard cannot support Win ME, 2000, and XP, anyway: http://support.gateway.com/s/MOTHER... raiden1701 Your resistor problem. Many of the resistors beside the cpu socket are often of an identical value. If you can't guess-timate the size of the broken one by jamming the broken pieces together and measuring across it with an ohm meter, the ones beside it may be an identical value, and you can probably go by that. Also see response 26. "The PC also won't boot off my XP CD, but it will boot other bootable CD's like Memtest 86." AHA! - the CD drive does recognize some bootable CDs! - that points to the XP CD copy being a poor copy or a copy of a non-bootable XP CD or a copy made to a CD-RW disk and the CD drive cannot recognize it properly, as well as you not having a bootable Win 98 CD. You should be able to fix that, if the original XP CD is bootable, by copying the original to a CD-R disk, or by copying the XP CD copy you have on a burner drive that can read it 100% to a CD-R (turn on the verification features in the burning program). Is your Win 98 CD an original or a copy? If it's an original it's not bootable.

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"Is your Win 98 CD an original or a copy? If it's an original it's not bootable." If it wasn't booting, of course.

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I have multiple copies of my XP and 98 discs, all which boot from any other PC than this one. They were burned just on to regular CD-R's. Maybe if I reburned them using the slowest method, that could work? Win 98 on my drive works in all other PC except this on also.

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I tried updating 98se (all on my other working PC) but the PC still has the BIOS plug and play fail safe thing and won't detect my A: or CD drive or anything for that matter. It wants bios.vxd and I tried copying my 98 CD contents the PC but still no luck.

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Actually it detects A: now and I copied the bios.vxd file but it says it has a better version of this file even though there was no file there to begin with.

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You have to cure your hardware mysteries up first. Obviously the 2gb hard works, though it could still be faulty. There has to be a reason the Gateway isn't seeing it. If you did not change any settings in the Gateways bios between the time it was working and the time it was not detected, the most common reason a computer has problems like that when it wasn't before is the power supply is failing. Did you check the power supply on the Gateway as I suggested ? If you didn't, do it! See response 4 in this: http://www.computing.net/hardware/w... If you're not sure whether it's okay, if the wiring colors on the main connector on the PS on your working computer is the same for the 20 positions (it doesn't matter if the working computer has 24 as long as the 20 they have in common are the same - the 4 connector on the end can probably can be removed easily - it clips on) temporarily try the PS from the working computer in the Gateway. Get your or any CD drive working properly in the Gateway, or at least get the floppy drive working properly in the Gateway. Did you try using a laser lens cleaning CD in the Gateway CD drive? If you don't have one, get one - dollar stores often have them the cheapest. Try the CD drive from the Gateway connected to your working computer with the same CD-R CD(s) that won't boot in the Gateway - if they still won't boot, there's something about the CD drive from the Gateway that doesn't get along with your CD-R copy(s) of the Windows CDs! You could try using the CD drive from your working computer in the Gateway temporarily - if it boots the Windows CDs that didn't boot befire, you know there's something about the CD drive on the Gateway that doesn't get along with your CD-R copy of the Win98SE CD! If it boots, new CDRoms are cheap and will have no problems reading a CD-R - get another one! Or get a CD burner for a bit more! The Windows copies should work if they are CD-Rs. You could try making another copy in a slow CD drive rather than a DVD/CD burner drive, with verification turned on for both the integrity of the blank CD and the original/copy, but it could very well be the CD drive in the Gateway is too old or too worn out to detect CD-Rs reliably. Try the floppy drive from the Gateway in your working computer, and visa versa. Once you have at least a floppy drive working and the CD drive reading if not booting: Response 52: "Right now I am installing 98se on the 2gig drive on my other 1400Mhz PC and then I'll see if the drive boots up on the other board." Response 53: "I succesfully install 98se on my 2gig drive. I implanted that drive onto the main rig here. Win 98se loads but then won't detect my CD drive, and the device manager only detects: System adapters x3 and network adapters. It has a question mark beside: other adapters, Plug and Play BIOS (fail safe). Win 98se still loads up but is fairly useless." How do you have the 2gb hard drive connected to the working computer? It sounds like you have it as master on the first IDE, and you are booting with it. Or do you have it connected as as slave on the first or second IDE, or as master on the second IDE? If you are booting with it, Windows will set itself up to the working computer's mboard - if it does not have a mboard with a 430FX chipset, that will do you no good for the Gateway computer. You will get the same errors when you connect it to the Gateway again because of the mistake 98 and 98SE make with the I/O address. "I tried updating 98se (all on my other working PC) " If it didn't work before, why are you trying to do the same thing again? I asked you to check the hard drive on another working computer, not to try to repair Windows on it! bios.vxd has to do with Plug and Play support. It is supposed to be in the C:\Windows\System folder after Setup has finished. If you already have bios.vxd there, there is nothing wrong with it. It is on the Win 98 or 98SE Cd, but it is compressed, and inside a .cab file. Windows will often give your false error messages. It will say a file is missing or not working when the problem is actually caused by something else - usually something that the file in the error message is dependant on, but Windows has no message about the dependant file. ...... I spent many days figuring out the 430FX chipset I/O address puzzle with Win 98, which also applies to 98SE. I KNOW it will take the least amount of time to get 98 or 98SE working properly with your Gateway 430FX chipset mboard if you: - format the hard drive, by whatever means - e.g. with an XP boot disk - to FAT 32 - Remove the power to the Gateway, remove all your cards except the video card, restore the power. - install Windows again, by whatever means. If the CD drive will boot, run Setup from that. If the floppy drive boots but the CD drive won't, I recommend you use a Win 98SE Startup disk, or the one that comes with a new Windows CD (which is a slightly modified Startup Disk), let it load CD drive support, type Setup when it has finished loading. - Windows will have far fewer files you can't load near the end of Setup when it can no longer see the CD drive - Cancel each of those - fix the I/O address mistake, as in this: http://www.lanyoncomputers.com.au/c... - reboot - after both the hard drive controllers, dual fifo, and the CDRom drive show up in Device Manager..., shut down the computer, remove the power to it, - THEN install your other cards - After you boot, Windows will then install what drivers it can for the cards, and maybe some other ones it couldn't install before - for cards Windows doesn't have drivers for, you'll have to figure what they need - we can help with that.

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check your 2gb hard drive. See the latter part of response 1 in this: http://www.computing.net/windows95/...

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Since it doesn't sound anymore like you plan on upgrading the motherboard I thought I'd check out the Thor motherboard I found in my scrap pile. I cleaned it up, added some RAM and a 166 cpu and it posted OK. Let me know if you want it. If so I'll do the bios upgrade. I'm still not sure if that motherboard is MMX capable. Intel had a program--odpdiags.exe--to check a bios for compatiblitiy but all the links for it I found led back to intel and it's not on their site anymore.

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"I'm still not sure if that motherboard is MMX capable. Intel had a program--odpdiags.exe--to check a bios for compatiblitiy but all the links for it I found led back to intel and it's not on their site anymore." I've noticed that too - some older stuff that was on the Intel site up until the last year or two is no longer there, including the manual and other support info for the Advanced/ATX (Thor) mboard, and some older links to older chipset drivers etc. don't work but most can be found elsewhere on the site if you dig around. Two sources odpdiags.exe - both directly link to downloads: http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geupnZu... http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geupnZu... raiden1701 has confirmed his 233MMX cpu works fine at 233mhz on the Thor if his multiplier is set to 1.5X as insistantly suggested by jam. However, the mboard doesn't support the 2.8v cpu core voltage - the closest he can get is 3.1x - it may work fine inspite of that as long as it doesn't get too hot.

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"Sabertooth According to this, the Thor mboard cannot support Win ME, 2000, and XP, anyway:....." All the more reason why the main mission should never even have been attempted, but then again, the OP might not have been explicitly aware of this until much later into this thread. Oh & BTW, I actually used (loosely) the term 9X as a reference to the 95 & 98 OS' back in response #78. How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

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When I got the Gigabyte mboard mentioned in this to work with Win 98 (a typo in that - it has the 430FX chipset too) working: http://www.lanyoncomputers.com.au/c... Windows was okay with 96 and 128mb of ram, despite the fact the chipset doesn't support caching more than 64mb of ram. I also had to replace the RTC module on it with a Dallas one, and because of the way the original power supplied failed (dead fan, way too much heat inside the case for too long)I had to replace the power supply, video card, floppy drive, cdrom drive, and dial-up modem. At that time it was worth doing it (I had used spares). I've still got it - I hate to toss out what I have spent a lot of time getting to work properly.

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I did have to buy a power supply though. $20 or so for the Dallas RTC module. And I bought used ram.

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When I got the Gigabyte mboard mentioned in this to work with Win 98 (a typo in that - it has the 430FX chipset too) working: http://www.lanyoncomputers.com.au/c... Windows was okay with 96 and 128mb of ram, despite the fact the chipset doesn't support caching more than 64mb of ram. I also had to replace the RTC module on it with a Dallas one, and because of the way the original power supplied failed (dead fan, way too much heat inside the case for too long)I had to replace the power supply, video card, floppy drive, cdrom drive, and dial-up modem. At that time it was worth doing it (I had used spares). I've still got it - I hate to toss out what I have spent a lot of time getting to work properly.

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The 3.135 is the I/O voltage. A motherboard only designed for the 54C isn't going to bother with the second core voltage selection. All the MMX P-I motherboards I've seen either auto detect the MMX cpu or have a MMX jumper or a core voltage jumper. This one has none of that. But some of the sites I googled indicated a bios upgrade may be all that's needed to change a non-MMX MB to an MMX board. I would have thought it was in the motherboard/socket wiring and couldn't be altered by a bios. I'm curious about this so maybe later on today I'll do the bios upgrade on the board I have and then see if the posting screen will show an MMX cpu. I haven't tried an MMX on it yet as I didn't want risk damage if this fellow wanted it.

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I did the bios upgrade on it, put a 233 MMX in, changed the multiplier to 1.5/3.5 and booted up. The posting screen showed the 233 speed but not MMX. I went into cmos and it did ID the cpu as MMX so I guess the motherboard is MMX capable. I tried running Bios_chk.exe (which is what odpdiags extracts to) but got the message 'this program requires windows' so didn't bother to continue as it seemed unnecessary anyway.

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When I load into Safemode, device manager says almost everything is working fine, but in normal mode almost nothing is detected.

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You've still got the problem of getting the OS to load the files it needs for the hardware on the different motherboard. Safe mode won't see the cdrom. Normal mode won't either unless the IDE controller are setup and usually it needs the 98 cd in order to do that. It's a catch-22. Windows needs the 98 cd in order to set up the cdrom but it can't set up the cdrom unless it can access the 98 cd. The only way around that is to get the files copied to the hard drive either by using a bootdisk with cdrom support and copying them with dos or connecting the drive to another computer. If you're having problems with the floppy drive first make sure the floppy controller is enabled in cmos. Then if it's not recognizing or reading a known good floppy disk get another floppy drive. Plus you've got to consider that any hardware problems you're experiencing may be due to the damaged motherboard.

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"When I load into Safemode, device manager says almost everything is working fine, but in normal mode almost nothing is detected." We haven't heard from you since response 83. In what context are making that statement? Where is the 2gb hard drive now? Do you try any of the stuff in response 84? 85?

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The A: drive works and I have copied the 98 CD to the hard drive. The hard drive is in the problem PC now. I tried the stuff in 84 and 85, but still not working. I can't install the 98se OS because A: won't acknolage my startup disks and the 98se CD isn't bootable.

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How did you get the files copied to the hard drive? If you used a bootdisk as I mentioned in #72 then obviously it does acknowlege your startup disk. If you connected it to another PC and copied the files that way you don't really need a floppy drive to install windows. On a blank drive you use the SYS C: command to make the hard drive bootable, then copy the files to it, put it in the other PC, boot up from the hard drive and run the installation. If you're still trying to fix the installation you ran on the other computer then having the files is all you need. In normal mode go into device manager and delete all the 'unknown devices' and reboot. Then follow my last paragraph in #72.

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DAVEINCAPS Originally he Setup Win 98SE on the drive with the 2gb on another computer, then he transferred the drive to the Gateway and of couse had problems because of the 430FX chipset I/O problem.- see response 52 and 53. According to raiden1701 the Gateway has not so far ever recognized any bootable floppy that works in his other computer, and has not recognized any bootable Windows CD that work in the other computer with the exception, he claims, of a memtest86 bootable CD. raiden1701 You have been poor, in the last few posts especially, about providing details as to what you have done. Obviously we are bending over backwards trying to help you out, so you could at least provide more details. Did you wipe the messed up Windows from the 2gb before you copied the CD contents to it? If you didn't you still has a mess on your hands. Yes, another way of installing Windows is you can wipe the drive (e.g. by re-formatting it)and copy the contents of the Windows CD to it, but in that case in order to be able to run Setup you must be able to boot a bootable floppy in the floppy drive, preferred, or the hard drive must already be bootable, in which case in this case if you haven't done that you must connect the 2gb to the working computer, and make it bootable - either by connected it as a slave and using Start - Run - Type: command (press Enter) type: sys x: (press Enter) where x is the drive letter assigned to the drive, or by connecting it as master on the first IDE and booting with a 98SE Startup floppy and typing sys c: at the prompt after the floppy has finished loading. Have you tried the floppy drive and cd drive out of the working computer in the gateway? Your problems may be totally faulty or too old hardware related. In ANY case, whatever way you install Windows, you STILL must follow the steps necessary because of the 430FX chipset I/O problem - see the last part of response 84.

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I copied the 98 files from another PC (with this drive connected to it). I followed your paragraph in post 72 but it didn't find bios.vxd, so no fix. I formatted the old XP installation from the drive then installed 98se. OK, so now, for no apparent reason, 98 detected everthing and now all drives are present and everthing else as well.

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I believe if I had got the floppy to work and boot off the startup disk and then installed 98 on this PC, that it would have naturally installed everthing. But since I installed 98 on another PC with a different motherboard, this caused problems.

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I am grateful for all your guy's help!!!

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I would still like to know why it's all working now.

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The floppy drive was damaged! I put in another one and the startup disks boot up fine!

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You STILL haven't told us what the 2gb drive is connected to at this moment. If you don't have it connected to the Gateway you must still do the stuff at the end is response 84! "The floppy drive was damaged! I put in another one and the startup disks boot up fine!" Finally! Why didn't you try that way back! A new floppy drive is well under $20, cheapest at the small places that build computerts and have lots of computer parts. Try swapping CD drives too!

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The 2 gig drive is the the problem PC (which isn't a problem anymore). I also swapped my CD drive for a CD burner which works good. But still... why device manager seeing everthing now when it didnt' before? I didn't do anything for it to work.

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I am now getting a "memory parity error" and just before it, the PC gets all sluggish.

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Remove the power to the Gateway case. Make certain all the ram is seated in it's slots well (all the way down) and the latches at the ends of the slots are latched (against the module ends). If you didn't clean the ram contacts when I asked you to do that before, do that. See response 2 in this - try cleaning the contacts on the modules. http://www.computing.net/hardware/w... "But still... why device manager seeing everthing now when it didnt' before? I didn't do anything for it to work." If you installed Windows with the 2gb drive on the other computer, when you installed the 2gb drive on the Gateway, Windows attempts to set itself to the changed mboard - some of the settings may be incorrect. In Device Manager You should have a CDRom entry Under Hard Disk Controllers you should have: Intel 82371FB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller Primary IDE Controller (dual difo) Secondary IDE Controller (dual fifo) - no ? marks, dual fifo must be there probably under System somewhere, you shoud see 82437FX, 82438FX. Is that what you see? ***********************************************************************

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In Device Manger, probably under System devices somewhere, you shoud see some entry with 82437FX in it, and one or two entries with 82438FX in it.

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The RAM is clean and seated well. I see all that but no 82438FX, just 82371FB PCI to ISA bridge. All seems well and I haven't had anymore RAM errors (yet). I am running RAM diagnostics.

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You probably won't have any more problems with the ram. I thought you would have had to fix the I/O error you get when you install Windows from scratch on a 430FX chipset mboard. This computer working without you having to do that is a an unexpected pleasent surprise! It's probably okay. This chipset is old enough that it is already supported by Win 95 and up, and Windows has all the info you need about the mboard chipset itself. If you removed all the cards except the video as I asked you can install them now. Remove the power to the case while doing that. It would be useful if you could write down any brand and model names and the model numbers on the largest chips you see on the cards, before you install the cards, otherwise you may need to remove them again to help identify them. While you're doing that, get the brand and model of the video card, if applicable. If some are unknown and Windows doesn't have drivers we will help you with that - tell us what you see marked with ? in Device Manager.

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"The RAM is clean and seated well." Did you clean it? - it doesn't necessarily look dirty - e.g. a fingerprint can be all it takes for the ram to have poor connections. If you didn't clean it, do that!

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I didn't clean the RAM but I wonder if the damaged resistor had something to do with the parity error. I did have to download drivers for my video card (S3). I did Memtest86 with no errors.

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"I didn't clean the RAM but I wonder if the damaged resistor had something to do with the parity error." If you had done the many things I have suggested the FIRST time I suggested them, there would not be over a hundred posts about your problems in this thread! The number of posts in this thread may set a record for this web site! Clean the ram contacts! That mboard is at least eleven years old - the likelyhood something has accumulated on those contacts in that time is high, even if you can't see it visibly! Cleaning the ram contacts has worked for me every time I have gotten memory errors on many mboards - it is extremely rare for ram that was working fine before to go bad unless something external to it has damaged it. The parity error you got typically indicates there was a ram connection reliability problem, and it is extremely unlikely it has anything to do with the broken resistor. Although removing and installing the ram often works simply because the contacts are touching slightly different places, or because whatever film that is on the contacts is wiped a bit in tiny areas by removing/installing the ram, cleaning the contacts will ensure that you are unlikely to have that happen again for years. The broken resistor is probably either a small load on a circuit connected to the cpu, or a small load on a circuit that modifies the voltage or current supplied to the cpu - it is probably in parallel with some circuit, so it being broken doesn't make the cpu not work, but there may be suttle problems caused by it being broken, such as occaisional data errors when the cpu does certain things. Replacing the resistor. See Response 79 for how to identify it's size, refer to response 26; the first part response 37 for how to remove and replace it and soldering recommendations. What to do about the mboard cpu voltage being higher than 2.8 volts - see the latter part of response 37.

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Newest available S3 Trio drivers (but they're old): Go here http://www.lanyoncomputers.com.au/c... Use search posts: mike duway See this post: Re: S3 Trio 3D/2X drivers - Updated Oct 3_06 posted by Mike for Duway on 03-Oct-06 If you have an entry in Add/Remove programs for S3 drivers, uninstall them before installing these drivers. If there is a Setup or Install program (Setup is preffered - Install may be for older Dos operating systems) run that rather than letting Windows install the drivers while booting. See any install directions - you may need to remove the S3 Trio in Device Manager - Display adapters before you install these drivers. .... Updated Crystal CS4232 Win 9X audio drivers: http://home.ptd.net/~don5408/driver... If you have an entry in Add/Remove programs for Crystal and/or CS4232 drivers, uninstall them before installing these drivers. If there is a Setup or Install program (Setup is preffered - Install may be for older Dos operating systems) run that rather than letting Windows install the drivers while booting. See any install directions - you may need to remove the Crystal CS4232 in Device Manager - Sound, video, and game controllers before you install these drivers. .... It is ALWAYS recommended that you DO NOT flash the bios if you are not having any problems. If you ARE having problems, flashing the bios will NOT help unless you can find specific info such as in the release notes or Readme file for a bios update that says it will cure your problem. Newer bios updates always include all previous fixes unless they were causing other problems. You are taking a big risk when you flash your bios - if the flash fails, and/or the flash chip physically fails while flashing (this is COMMON - these cheap flash chips can only be flashed an unpredictable small number of times), you will have a mboard that will not boot. Bios update info. See Response 28 You must copy the whole ftp link and paste into your browser Address line. The bios update download is a self executing zip file. Download it or copy it after it has been downloaded to an empty folder, click on it to extract it's contents. See Readme.txt. See Response 75, paragraph starting with "For ANY newer floppy disk,..." to check the floppy disk for errors while you make the flash floppy. Use the Full, Copy System files selections to check the floppy and make it bootable. See Readme.txt for how to flash the bios. In this case the extracted files from the bios download must be copied to a bootable flash floppy. Don't copy the original download to the floppy. ...... After you flash the bios, the first time you boot you will get a "Cmos Checksum Error...." or similar message. You will either be prompted to enter the bios Setup or you will automatically go there. Enter the bios Setup, set the Date and Time, and and load Bios Defaults - save settings, reboot. You MUST do this (or Clear the CMOS by moving a jumper on the mboard) in order for the bios update to be fully accepted by the mboard. Loading Defaults may work in situations where Clear Cmos does not help. If you have a fairly recent model scanner or printer (~1999 or later) connected to a parallel (LPTx) port, you also need to make sure it is set to EPP, EPP/ECP, or ECP mode in the bios - usually EPP is fine - ECP mode also requires you use Add Hardware in Windows to install an ECP port if it is not already there in Device Manager. (you must use ADD Hardware to add an ECP port in Win 95/98/98SE; having an EPP port does not require you do anything like that) ..... How to show hidden files - this is useful in any case, but if you don't have enough room on the flash floppy, you can delete a system file but you can't see it until you can see hidden files. In My Computer or Windows Explorer, click the folder you want to look at. On the View menu, click Folder Options. Click the View tab, and then click Show all files. If you want to see all file name extensions, click to clear the Hide file extensions for known file types check box. (I recommend doing both) To make those settings apply to all folders everywhere (recommended), at the top of the page, under You can make all your folders look the same, choose Like current folder. On the bootable floppy, delete drvspace.bin to make more room ......... Your mboard can use EDO (Extended Data Output) or FPM (Fast Page Mode) ram (the regular kind). EDO is no more than 15% faster than FPM. You can use a mix of FPM and EDO ram, but all of the ram must be EDO in order for the all ram to run at EDO speeds. Would you notice the difference between EDO and FPM overall? - you might see a tiny bit of difference. ..... Sooner or later you will need something that can extract files from a .zip archive (compressed) file. WinZip 7.0 is available here: http://www.oldversion.com/program.p... Note: The Winzip web site no longer has that version, and you can download and use a newer version of WinZip, but WinZip 7.0 is the minimum you need for Win 9x and up (long file name support), it works fine in any version of Windows 9x and up, it supports multiple floppy (spanned).zips, it is small enough to fit on a floppy disk, and it will use much less space on your hard drive than newer versions do. Sooner or later you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to read .pdf document files - e.g. for the manual for this mboard at http://www.x86.org/ftp/manuals/moth... - get adv_atx.pdf You may already have Adobe Acrobat Reader on a CD that came with a mboard or other software. Version 5.x is fine for most .pdf documents. If you can't find a CD with an Adobe Acrobat Reader install on it.... Go to the Adobe site http://www.adobe.com Downloads - Get Adobe Reader Choose Win 98 for Version 5.05 - it takes up far less space on your hard drive. or Win 98SE - Version 6.01 is much newer and supports more fonts but takes up far more room on your hard drive (you probably don't need it, unless a .pdf document will not display properly). ...... Go to the Microsoft Windows Update site and install all the critical and security updates that apply. IE (Internet Explorer) should be updated to at least version 5.5 . You may already have an installation CD that has the install for IE 5.5, such as a ISP's software disk, or some mboard CDs. If you don't have such, the Microsoft site does not seem to have it anymore. You can get it here: http://browsers.evolt.org/download.... IE 5.5 does not work properly on a small but growing number of web sites however. The Windows Update site has IE 6.x available for 98SE, probably in the recommended updates, but it takes up a lot more space on your hard drive. The S3 Trio video on the mboard does not support 3D video or Direct X. You can load a newer DirectX version if you like from the Microsoft web site, the S3 Trio video will work, but it will not support some advanced DirectX features. If you install a video card in a PCI slot, most video cards will work better than the onboard S3 Trio does, and some newer ones have 3D and DirectX support built in. You may need to set your bios to initialize the video on the card in the slot first. The memory sharing setting in the bios for the onboard S3 video should be no more than 1/2 of the ram you have installed. When you install a video card in a slot, the ram sharing settings in the bios are ignored by the bios, and all of the ram is available to Windows. ***********************************************************************

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The CPU is working fine. I have a large heatsink and fan on it and I've set the voltage as low as it will go. I've installed all the drivers. Thanks for the driver links. I can't do anything about the resistor as it is to small for my soldering iron and I wouldn't be able to get a resistor like that around here anyways. I'm willing to just live with it.

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I clean my RAM and the slots with contact cleaner and my compressed air sprayer.

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"I can't do anything about the resistor as it is to small for my soldering iron and I wouldn't be able to get a resistor like that around here anyways. I'm willing to just live with it." You don't need to get the same type of resistor - they aren't available except to mboard and card manufacturers anyway as far as I know because they are normally installed by machines. You can use a regular resistor in as small a size as you can find - e.g. a 1/4 watt or 1/8 watt one from an electronics supplies store. Other than that you would only need a soldering iron with a small enough tip and a tiny bit of solder you could get that from some dollar stores if you're cheap. See the info I pointed to. I have no idea whether that resistor being missing will harm the cpu or the mboard in the long run, but whether it does or doesn't you may get symptoms such as occaisional data errors when the cpu does certain things.

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According to what my board looks like, the part he broke had to have been a surface mount capacitor or resistor. They're only a millimeter or two long. Given the small and close solder points I think it'd be just as hard to solder in an axial resistor as it would the exact replacement. Raiden1701, I don't know why you're still fooling with that thing but if you want the Thor motherboard I have you can have it for just the postage--probably $3.95 parcel post, $4.05 priority. I have no use for it and I'll eventually scrap it for probably $1.00 a pound. It's got the bios upgrade and no broken parts.

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Ok, I'd take that mobo off you for the 4 bucks priority. I know what you mean by having lots of junk PC parts. I feel bad scraping them, that's why I sometimes try to make them into something.

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OK, send me a private message with your Washington address. Tomorrow I'll hook a hard drive up to it just to make sure the IDE controllers are OK. Then I'll send it.

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It says I can't send a private message because I am the original poster.

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I just figured out how to send you a private message.

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But how do I recive your private message?

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Click on My Computing.Net in the left column and then click Private Message Center. Any messages you've gotten will show there. I got your message. I may be busy the next day or two but will let you know when I send it.

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I gotta barn full of old PCs, socket 7 (even 5)with heatsinks. all worked when tested before put in storage or they got tossed. These old dogs aint worth the cost of shipping as a working unit but could send a Cowboy boot size box of anything you want put in it for around $6.00. Motherboards w/CPU &HS plus RAM, etc,bubblewrapped need to know preference of PSU (AT or ATX) most are AT with 4 wire on/off switch versus 2 wire momentary ATX PS switch. to match connectors. Many Hdds are 2.5 gig or less. and a K6 500Mhz was fastest CPU noted in the lot. Or increase dollars and will increase box size. Parts are basically free, just need shipping, or complete working units If ya wanna go that much to ship. They boot, is about all I did to determine save or trash. PM me. Or anyone else who wants to help cleanout the barn. correct me if I'm wrong

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