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From: afzal@cui.unige.ch (Afzal Ballim)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware,comp.os.msdos.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Gateway 2000, Diamond SpeedStar, Pheonix Bios questions
Keywords: Gateway, Diamond, Phoenix
Message-ID: <4148@cui.unige.ch>
Date: 12 Dec 90 13:30:32 GMT
Organization: University of Geneva, Switzerland
Lines: 39



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.

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