afzal@cui.unige.ch (Afzal Ballim) (12/12/90)
I've recently bought a Gateway 2000 25MHz. machine without cache. (I was ordering the 20MHz, but they had none in stock and said that the 25MHz was the same price. In the end, when it arrived I found it had not only the 25MHz processor, but an 80Meg drive instead of a 65, and the Diamond SpeedStar board with 1 Meg instead of the ATI with 512K). I am very pleased with the machine overall, but have a couple of problems, and was wondering if anyone could help me. The first seems to be a problem with the Phoenix BIOS. When I do something like "setsys AT8" it tells me that the machine is an MASIC 20 with cache. However, if I just do "setsys" then I get put into the menu to select type, with the MASIC 25 (no cache) entry highlighted. Is this actually a problem? Is there a setting somewhere that maybe mis-set? I have looked at the pin settings on the board, and according to the manual they are set correctly for a 25 MHz processor. The second problem is more bothersome. I launch Windows 3.0 from my autoexec.bat file. Sometimes (1 out of 8 or 10 times) when Windows comes up the monitor goes crazy (it can't seem to sync.). [Note: this is with the standard Gateway monitor.] By default, I star in 800x600x256 mode, although I have seen the same in 1024x768x256 mode. When the machine arrived I did have a problem with the SpeedStar, in that there was no red. On taking the board out, I saw that one of the chips was not seated properly in the socket, so I put it in and that cleared up that problem. I don't know if this is a problem specific to Windows (I have not seen it exhibited by any other software I have) or if it is a hardware problem. Any ideas anyone? (P.S. The machine I have is switched to European voltage rates. I don't know if this has any bearing) All that aside, I think the Gateway is a great machine, and would thorougly recommend it to anyone. Afzal Ballim |EAN,BITNET,EARN,MHS,X.400: afzal@divsun.unige.ch ISSCO, University of Geneva |UUCP: mcvax!cernvax!cui!divsun.unige.ch!afzal 54 route des Acacias |JANET: afzal%divsun.unige.ch@uk.ac.ean-relay CH-1227 GENEVA,Switzerland |CSNET,ARPA: afzal%divsun.unige.ch@relay.cs.net
system@infopls.UUCP (SYSOP) (12/15/90)
afzal@cui.unige.ch (Afzal Ballim) writes: > The first seems to be a problem with the Phoenix BIOS. When I do something > like "setsys AT8" it tells me that the machine is an MASIC 20 with cache. > However, if I just do "setsys" then I get put into the menu to select type, > with the MASIC 25 (no cache) entry highlighted. Is this actually a problem? > Is there a setting somewhere that maybe mis-set? I have looked at the pin > settings on the board, and according to the manual they are set correctly > for a 25 MHz processor. I have the 386/25, but with cache. The setsys program seems to simply figure out the computer speed with a simple loop. The problem is that this isn't always accurate. If things seem to work OK, I wouldn't bother. --------------- Andrew Rossmann andyross@infopls.UUCP or ..!uunet!ddsw1!infopls!system Infoplus Support BBS +1 708 537 0247, 1200/2400, 24 hours