Gateway Desktops: Can we resurrect them?

hey there you know it's been a while since we looked at some Gateway systems and we've got two Charming desktops from the late '90s or early 2000s here those should be fun to explore so let's tear into these starting with the e3400 you know I'm continually impressed with how well gateways resist yellowing who would have ever guessed Gateway used such high quality plastic and we see this system was well into the cowprint logo era and that is no ordinary floppy drive that little Insignia on the door indicates that this is an ls120 super Drive LS 1220s were called super flop P they could hold 120 megab of data and these drives are actually fully backwards compatible with regular 3 and 1 half in floppy discs and this is in fact my very first ls120 drive back in the day zip discs served my large capacity disc needs and nothing too noteworthy about that generic looking cdrom Drive although it does look original and we are badged for Windows 2000 and we're sporting a pennium 3 though interestingly enough it has a COA sticker for Windows 98 what's up with that I would think it would also be bad for Windows 98 my first thought was somebody swapped this top cover but that serial number matches the serial number on the back and speaking of the back here it is conspicuously absent is a dialup modem that's surprising but we do have an RJ45 Nick well also have onboard sound and USB and I find it very interesting that we have two VGA ports I'm guessing this upper one is a card well that's quite odd to give you this little window here I can see that being quite tricky with modern VGA connectors and here's a good look at that label manufactured September 2nd 2000 all right let's get this thing open we seem to have a single thumb screw here and it stays with the case quite conveniently now I'm guessing we do a slidy thing no it doesn't slide it may have something to do with these tabs let's see they spread outward do we lift up maybe Yep looks like it there we go who that is weird this thing is quite strange the ATX power connector is on the Riser and surprisingly it does have AGP Graphics but this card is quite unique look at that weird IO Shield it's Square so there definitely wouldn't be any swapping in of a regular video card unless he want it to just be flopping around in there let's pull that card out and it is an ATI rage 128 but I just can't get over that iio shield look how funny that looks I suppose if you found a video card that had the VGA connector in that exact same spot you could just Swap this over but I'm not aware of any standard positioning of the VGA socket that's interesting and there's the backside so it otherwise just looks like a regular rage 128 from 1999 strange stuff uhoh we've got capacitor plague issues this thing is right in that time period looks like the bad ones are a 1500 microfarad which I don't have and funny enough I just ordered some but I highly doubt they're going to be here in time hopefully there's still just enough life left in these things to run this machine and lucky enough we have a hard drive with an ad conductor cable but what is this contrivance they hav it mounted in paloalto products.com this thing looks like it has some tricks up its sleeve let's see what it does let's get this thing disconnected now I guess you just lift up on this okay hey that's really easy Quantum Fireball 7.5 GB looks like a manufacturer date of August 31st 2000 so probably original to the system not quite sure what Gateway like to use for hard drives in this time period but it seems legit and I'm seeing some Ever So subtle signs of water damage in this system that video card IO Shield has some of this oxidation too we're goingon to have to keep an eye out for that and I see we have a case intrusion detection switch on that Riser that just lets you know whenever somebody opens the case but it's the type of thing I only ever really see on Enterprise grade machines perhaps this was gateway's business oriented machine I'm not sure Gateway ever targeted the Enterprise but I guess they must have okay let's check out the brains of the operation starting with the RAM and that's a 512 Meg stick of PC 133 from crucial which is a micron company so I'm not convinced this is original to the system I'm pretty sure crucial is a consumer only division well let's see what's going on with that CPU let's get that fan disconnected W that heat SN clip definitely is not finger friendly okay how did they expect you to do this yesh I don't know anybody with a pain tolerance that high oh that's fun but hey it's off and and not doing well in the thermal compound Department that's quite sad and that's a 733 MHz chip with 256k of cache and 133 MHz front side bus and if I'm reading the fpo code correctly it was manufactured the 36th week of the year 2000 so no doubt original to the system let's get the remnants of that thermal compound off of there now let's just check those pins and yep their pins all good let's just leave this in there for now okay I want to get this motherboard out of here just because I can and it looks like this panel down here is some kind of contraption what for allowing the motherboard to slide out after removing these four screws of course so let's see how that goes there's that paloalto products.com URL again which I did check and that site no longer exists it's being domain parked so I guess that was Gateway case OEM and look at that we've got destructions according to those we just lift up on these tabs while somehow flipping this out and there we go hey that was pretty easy wonder why they ever went out of business and this tab says lift then pull so let's do that okay I guess that released something what do we pull that doesn't seem like it should be pulling let's just try pulling on the board not getting far but the thing has a gigantic Edge connector over there it's basically the size of the entire motherboard okay I must be missing something let's try pulling this all the way out aha there we go I just had to overcome the firm grip of that edge connector just look at the size of that thing interesting bit of modularity in this case see we can position these little nut bars in just about any configuration I'm just going to put this one back where it came from and now it's clear to me I wasn't supposed to remove those screws but that probably would have resulted in the breakage of this little lever here so I'm still glad I did it the way I did and it's a good thing there weren't any SMD components in the path of that nut bar asz it would have knocked them clean off and is that solder residue it sure looks like it in various parts of the board yeah sure is well that's one hell of a manufacturing flaw this stuff is kind of everywhere there's some up here too let me see if I can clean that off let's see what can be done without the desoldering wick okay at least it comes right off the solder mask okay that's good enough I guess it probably wasn't hurting anything to begin with but it was still bothering me and here's some more that's pretty crazy this board would have most likely been wave soldered and the solder mask is supposed to prevent the solder from sticking to things it's not supposed to stick to that is interesting wonder who gateway's motherboard OEM was okay I do see some signs of corrosion here fortunately it doesn't look too major let's just try to scrub it off with IPA okay yeah no harm done and luckily I don't see any other problems with this board so let's start knocking this dust off now let's check out that battery yeah I'd say it's dead just slightly I swear this channel is the best thing that ever happened to the CR 2032 industry okay I'll see how that Fan's sounding well despite some vibration actually sounds great no bearing service needed let's just get everything cleaned [Music] up good enough for me okay now let's make sense of that thermal [Music] whatnot almost came off [Music] clean I believe that will do a spoonful of slurry will cure what Elia my thumb will never forgive me yesh they couldn't possibly make that more uncomfortable okay now what does it take to get these drives out of here I'm about 80% certain this face plate has to come off and I see some clips that should be easy enough let's see yeah yep super easy it's always a win when those don't break I suppose I should disconnect that drive yeah they sure got things packed up in here well that was tricky and these drives are on Rails so we just squeeze these two together and it breaks immediately well that's old plastic for you well let's hope the super Drive comes out with no incident yeah no trouble at all and below that we have another 3 and 1/2 in Drive Bay and they even give you the rails for it that's so thoughtful we just don't deserve some people that's an interesting little Arrangement they have for the drive interfaces on this system they come off the Riser and they're all crammed up here so let's get this cleared out and we've got a loose sticker from something NST te doesn't ring a bell let's go ahead and yank this power supply okay the Riser is married to the power supply I see two screws down here aha and I suppose we're pulling this Riser too however that works let's get that front panel connector disconnected okay that wasn't too bad interesting little thing on its own it is I see it contains the eunet controller they were certainly trying to make the most of the available space in this case and there be our cdrom Drive made by mitsumi in July 2000 it's not immediately clear whether or not this is a gateway part but the manufacturer date seems to line up let's wipe that off now let's see if I can't get this rail off in one piece there we go and good thing I already broke this [Music] one and here's the super drive this one is most definitely a Gateway original part and it was also manufactured in July 2000 by Matsushita let's wipe it off [Music] and get rid of those rails now I actually have no idea how to service one of these drives I mostly just took it apart out of curiosity and to make sure it's not excessively Dusty which luckily it's not that makes me feel better about putting a disc in there and it's really hard to get a shot of those heads but they sure are funny looking at least compared to Floppy Drive heads so I am not going to risk trying to clean them and similar to The Voice coil and hard drives those heads are actuated electromagnetically see that coil is floating there inside that little Contraption which also has a neodium magnet and there's one on each side though not symmetrical it's all new and strange to me and the underside of this thing is just alien and it's kind of messing with my head because the rest of it looks just like a floppy drive and also this eject button is a switch sounds like it's hitting a normally open momentary push button kind of like a Zip drive I think I need to go lay down but who has time to rest when there's a power supply to torture and this is a very weird unique and non-standard one so I really don't want it to blow up therefore what I'm going to do is open it up that way if something does explode I can see what okay at first glance we look pretty good in here I don't see any dying capacitors I see good quality sastic that's the silicone stuff they put here to stop things from moving around okay let's test it then and power time that doesn't sound good that is definitely that fan I'm definitely going to have to look at that but otherwise everything else seems good let's see is that the fan yep sure is okay that's no big deal but I can't listen to that for 5 minutes so let's go ahead and fix it look at that doesn't even want a free Spin let's go ahead and cut into that label that gives us bearing access I'm actually going to flush this bearing since it sounded so terrible let's get some IPA down there let's go ahead and work it in now try to pull it out with a swab yeah pretty dirty now let's go and let it air dry now I'll drip some oil down there just a couple of drops will do now let's run it till it sounds okay and it's already sounding a lot better even in the direction I normally mounted in okay that'll do let's get that label clean that way our tape will actually stick to it and then we'll seal it up with our good friend Captain tape now let's trim that up why not there that's a lot better can't be interfering with the Solem Melody of the sacrificial hard drives that's not allowed and we have made it 5 minutes in good power supply and this case is so dusty I can't even stand it so let's go ahead and strip it down so I can can blast it [Music] out fair enough okay now that I'm pre- asmatic this thing clean let's get it back together okay I want to get the full nut bar experience so I've gone ahead and reattached those to the motherboard so let's reinstall this thing the way it was meant to be done let's just line up the one I can see okay got to get a little pushy well what do you know it works I did have to push uncomfortably hard on this lever though and it's not all the way in there either I don't think let's try pulling it back out okay well that's actually easier but I did add some deoxide to that Riser there and that adds a degree of lubricity okay let's get this thing in there seated properly I guess that's it I swear I don't remember that thing sticking out okay I got it to settle down I just had to give an extra firm shove on the motherboard to seat that edge connector the rest of the way the system is woefully proprietary so one must be careful okay it is whole again well mostly let's see how far we can get with six bad capacitors okay it didn't wait for me to push the power button rude all right we're posting beep beep see my settings are wrong obviously we don't care okay what's it doing okay just continue looks like we're booting something something NC based and now we just have a black screen I do have disc activity this might be captured of ice Shenanigans okay I rolled out the capture device that is innocent this time it seems to crash as soon as the OS loads and another interesting symptom the CPU fan stops spinning see watch I go and try to load [Music] WIndows yeah there it goes stopped spinning another thing that's weird is I can hear the reset button it's coming out as noise from the PC speaker let me go ahead and hold the microphone up close to [Music] that isn't that just the weirdest thing but that begs the question does this happen even on a non- Windows OS so let's find out well at least a CD ROM drive opened right up let's see if we get that same behavior in [Music] kopic okay made it to the boot screen let's see and yep exact same behavior okay so we definitely have Hardware problems and that's kind of no surprise given the condition of those caps bad caps can cause all kinds of weird behavior and as luck would have it we have caps the mailman arrived just in time to save the video let's go ahead and get this board recapped and I got to say the serviceability of this system is really starting to grow on me all I had to do is pull that video card motherboard should just come right out just like that okay I got our Target caps marked I should be able to get them to just fall off the board with the desoldering alloy my favorite party trick let's hit them with some [Music] flux now let's see yep there it goes that's one down and that's two down I don't know why I enjoy that so much and that's three down that one made it all the way to the floor okay now let's clean all this up and let's get rid of that [Music] flux okay that's clean enough for now well you know at least they didn't explode and corrode I'll give them that okay let's clean up top side all right let's get those caps in there and solder them down starting with Flux Of [Music] course let's go over those once more good enough for me let's clean it [Music] up done and done now time to find out if that was all in vain let's find out oh hey it still turns on okay here we are at the crash Point Let's [Music] see and yes it's booting Windows XP that feel never gets sold fixing stuff that is all right we acquired a new bad capacitor symptom and a very odd one we got the classic NT log on control alt delete thing wonder if this was from an Enterprise environment control alt delete we got a password probably that's okay we can crack that let's see maybe they left it blank nope okay no problem we can reset that let's get back into kopic [Music] let's see for the Run 9.1 let's give it a clean shutdown or restart in this [Music] case looks like it wants to let's see well it is booting but it sounds like that cdrom drive is having some trouble making a weird clicking sound once it finally spins up it is doing it though it is taking its sweet time to load the desktop environment though fortunately we don't need it let's see if we can break out to a terminal yeah there we go okay let's make sure we see that hard drive okay it's got to be sda1 let's go and mount that let's see where was that even mounted at media sda1 let's make sure yep that's a Windows install in there that Windows directory and get out that Sam hiive system 32 not capitalized there we go and there it is the Sam hiive is where Windows NT stores his local account information including passwords okay now we just use the chntpw tool on that Sam hiive get rid of that password all right let's go and clear that admin password let's make sure it's unlocked that should do it for the administrator account going write that out but I didn't see that one user account this thing might have been domain joined don't get much of a scrollback buffer and by the way to scroll in the console just shift page up or shift page down huh that's strange should be able to edit that one user back to user select it just kicks me out okay that's weird well either way at least we can get into the local admin account now let's give it a clean reboot so that everything unmounts cleanly initiating shut sequence hey sound card works works yeah that jde is the account I wanted to get into but for right now let's just go to local administrator let me in I don't care about that right now we are in but I can't believe they disabled the window startup sound such killjoys okay now let's see about those local accounts hey we got updates available okay whatever that is hey Le got my user manager snap in I love Windows NT yeah jde was indeed a local account let's just go ahead and reset that password proceed let's give our super secure password that's totally not just password all right that's done yeah this was definitely some kind of business environment let's try to get into that account now jde yeah yes I'm [Music] sure yes we know all right got some NASA paraphernalia there I like this person already this P reminder thing apparently it's ups related okay go away all right long last we are in let's see what we have on here oh this guy definitely was doing some productive stuff what do we have just some graphic stuff some office productivity stuff looks pretty boring what do we have in that games folder all The Usual Suspects Bellar advisor let's see what that has to say for itself and that is taking its sweet time I might just give up on that yeah I think it's time to kill old bell arc advisor nobody has time for that that oh go figure and I'm about to kill it it starts doing stuff checking the security settings of this computer you're going to be sorely disappointed and I'm running out of disc space it's probably the reason why this thing's running so terribly that combined with the fact that it's a pennium 3 running Windows XP let's see what does all Bellar adviser have for us it is Windows XP Service Pack 2 okay nothing groundbreaking there oh cool we got some dates was this thing being used all the way up to 2010 if so that would be an incredibly long life for this machine I don't know where else this would get those dates would have had to pull them from somewhere somewhere in Internet land well luckily this being Windows NT we can get some idea of the last time it was used event log usually gives us a clue let's igon that system 2011 okay first let's figure out what date it thinks it is okay it thinks it's 1990 so yeah those are valid date stamps this thing was being used all the way up to 2011 and it is in remarkably good condition for being used that long so I can easily forgive that bad power supply fan that's incredible and also kind of scary that they were running Service Pack 2 all that time okay what else do we have let's see what version of word that is office XP in the post clippy era okay what else can we get into it's kind of funny that they had Coral draw on a system that was named shipping that's very odd wonder why that is let's see if we can get one of those to open I don't know enough about coral draw to tell the difference between X3 and 9 we'll go with X3 sounds cooler that's cool it's a ion okay while it opens and I don't know the first thing of what to do in here so let's just get out well let's see what's on the rout of the hard drive why not these files are hidden guess they didn't go into their C drive very often just a bunch of boring office stuff let's see was complaining about low dis space let's see how low it was incredibly low 198 megabytes left where is it getting a B drive from does that ls120 drive emulate two drives well you know what I think it's about time we tested that thing anyway and this will be my first ever interaction with an LS 120 drive that felt weird it just kind of took the disc didn't snap in like a regular floppy Drive okay is it a drive or B Drive let's start with a and it's doing stuff and it works that thing sounds so funny too I don't think the microphone picked it up and of course I don't have any ls120 discs I've never even seen one in person that would have been nice to test okay let's see what B Drive was all about okay I guess it's just a phantom spooky ghost Drive they probably got enabled in the Bios somewhere okay go away quit oh that is no reason to crash Explorer there we go I want to hear that super drive [Music] again that sounds so funny let's copy all this stuff off of [Music] here that sounds nothing like a floppy drive I'm going to put the microphone up close it sounds more like a hard drive H that copied fast too I know ls120 drives are like super speed floppy drives now do I get my disc back I sure do that thing's cool okay now with this being an NTFS drive I'm not going to be able to run scandis at least not my preferred dos version of ScanDisk so we're going to have to run the not so aesthetically pleasing Windows version eror checking how boring let's go ahead and check out that drive and do it all it's probably going to ask to reboot yep no problem go right ahead and now we wait looks like we're [Music] good incredible okay now time for a well-deserved cleaning it doesn't need much there's just a few little scuffs here and there but now it looks even better I am going to have to replace that Intel badge though good thing geekon Spiel exists and same deal for the the top of the [Music] machine okay not too bad we do have some plastic damage up here but what are you going to do the thing was E-Waste wow what a machine a little capacitor plague couldn't keep this thing down not on my watch and considering that and the power supply fan were the only things that were wrong I am thoroughly impressed especially considering this thing's 11e service life who knew you could get such quality from Gateway that capacitor thing is hardly a knock against this thing that affected many many other brands well maybe it's ready for another 11 years let's move on to the next system next system is the P5 166 and this system is actually older than the previous one that's pretty funny because I think it looks newer but the original Gateway 2000 emblem is a dead giveaway as well as the pennium one badge and that CD and floppy Drive look awfully unique hopefully they're not too special and if so hopefully they work and this system actually has an additional Drive B okay you just push this little button up here and there it is they even went through the trouble of putting a little damper on that door for silky smooth operation I just love stuff like that and here's the back of the machine and that is quite a sight onboard USB on a pennium 1 System they were definitely thinking ahead and we have some kind of sound card there and it could be a nice one Gateway 2000 systems tend to have really decent sound cards at least in my experience and I guess somebody had a numeric system for determining where things go that's one way to do it and here's a close look at that label manufactured July 16th 1997 all right let's get this thing open we just have two thumb screws here I'm guessing they're not captive now surely this just slides back nothing to it and look at the size of that vrm heat sink it's almost as big as the cpu's heat sink and somebody got the hard drive big sad oh well what is that in there oh there sticky notes wonder how that got in there judging by the dust it's been there for a while that's funny let's start clearing these cables out don't know why that sound card is loose but hey saves me some work and that's an ins Sonic es 1370 I'm honestly not sure about that one could be decent enough it's definitely original for the system because there's that assembly date and that modem is also loose I'm saving some miles on that screwdriver this is also a Gateway original part made by us robotics one day I will find a use for all these old dialup modems I'm kind of surprised that power supply fan is the only cooling this system has they didn't add more than they needed I guess okay let's see what we have for [Music] brains and as advertised an Intel pennium one that thermal pad doesn't look too bad I will of course be refreshing it though now let's check the [Music] pins and for a zip socket that thing's pretty stuck in there that's very strange huh at least they're all in good condition and there's our info stepping s037 let's get that back in there that is a surprising amount of resistance for a zif socket aha there is a slightly bent pin let's just go ahead and bend that back aha that's a lot better wonder how that got bent may have been bent from the factory okay how about the ram okay not immediately clear what size it is or what speed it is is at least is clean and let's just stop and appreciate the fact that this thing has three Isis slots this could actually make quite a decent little dos gaming PC and the onboard Graphics is no slouch an ATI 3D Rage 2 with DVD decoding so I wonder if that's a DVD drive in there for 1997 that would have been quite fancy okay let's make sure that battery's dead yep sure is wouldn't want to needlessly replace one now and no CPU fan hardly any dust I feel like I'm playing on easy mode but we do have to get rid of that thermal compound a patron of mine sent me this stuff these are wiped specifically for removing thermal compound thank you very much Sergeant Mac let's see how well it works man you weren't lying about this stuff being pungent smells almost like tea tree oil it is taking it up off this is some of the toughest thermal compound that I usually have to deal with well definitely works as advertised that stuff smells too much like tea tree oil that has me suspicious I'm going to have to see if I can make some of these and just going to give it a quick wipe with IPA since it did leave a little film thus furthering my oil [Music] suspicions now that little film Left Behind is B basically just a stain and sometimes I can finish that off with a melamine sponge also known as a magic eraser so let's try that yeah that definitely helped our heat sink cleaning technology has come such a long way okay I got the CPU cleaned up too let's get it dressed Dress for Success okay let's work on getting these drives out of here and I guess the face plate has to come off too just like the previous system so let's see how that goes okay apparently that pops off at least it didn't break we are hanging up on something ah there's a little clip in there and no breakage just the way I like it and those are some funny looking drives and they appear to share a drive cage so guess we're pulling both at once couldn't be simpler and here's that CD drive it's not a DVD drive so I guess that GPU is just really Forward Thinking and this thing is made by Toshiba in May 1997 and with that funkified face plate it's definitely original to the system so they just attached some kind of something to the dis tray and elongated that led so yeah good luck replacing this drive if you don't already have those pieces and nothing super about this drive just your run-of-the-mill Panasonic drive with the keyboard Mash model number and the front of that is also unique of course they just have a special door on the thing longer on the eject button also not replacement friendly and keeping with the theme of the rest of the system this drive is incredibly clean inside that's not going to stop me from cleaning the heads though I trust no one and of course they were super clean but now I know they're super clean now let's refresh that [Music] grease okay now it's the power suppli turn and this one's quite an odd form factor too if it is a standard it's one that I'm not aware of but surprisingly enough I found a listing for this exact model power supply brand new on Amazon it says there's only three of them left so if it blows up I won't be terribly heartbroken so let's see if it blows up let's do the thing all right it's working why I'm not getting my 5vt load bad connection all right that's 5 minutes I deem you trustworthy all right it is that time time to see what if anything it does let's give it something to boot from here we go this one didn't wait for the power button either why are gateways so rude and we have a blinking power LED and no post that's awfully ominous time to investigate I guess and no codes on the post analyzer card so that's not great that could mean the CPU isn't running code but at least all the voltages are good well I just found something quite strange I pulled the CPU and that same pin that I straightened was bent again so I straightened it once more and ran it through the socket and to my surprise it was bent again so there's something wrong with that socket in fact if you watch very carefully this pin here has no wiper When I close the socket so yeah something's definitely off in there so do we replace the CPU socket okay I decided to just go ahead and remove the upper part of that socket I figured what if I got to lose and that was definitely tricky to remove and I didn't didn't get any of it on camera because I was just in one of those modes got a little overzealous but we can clearly see a problem with that PIN I'm going to go ahead and try to straighten it out with a sewing needle and I'm going to have to do it off camera because I got to get all up in there that thing is Tiny well that didn't go well in the process of unbending that pin contactor it just broke I guess for metal fatigue and I have no replacement for that socket I doubt you can even still buy replacement socket sevens so that's the end of the line for this system at least for now well I suppose I should get my disc out of there I guess this is the counterbalance to resurrecting the last system sure hate to put it on the Shelf but I really can't do anything else with it this week because I am also out of time so I'm just going to keep watch for some New Old Stock socket 7 sockets never know one could pop up so this machine is just going to have to sit in limbo until such time well that was a roller coaster I will find a no socket 7 though I'm not completely sure if that'll do it because I'm pretty sure that's a vsss pin those have a lot of redundancy on CPUs sadly I can't explore any further this week if there's any hope of getting this video out on time this is my on call week at work so I'm particularly pressed this channel is made possible by the fine people on patreon they help me acquire the hardware to show here in addition to being generally awesome thank you all see you next time

Channel: MikeTech

Views: 25,727

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Id: fEtf_jJzcUU

Length: 42min 19sec (2539 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 28 2024