Gammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 1, 2025
My next retro rescue / refurb project, kindly donated to me by (Danjones_uk on X.com) Thank you so much mate! 👍
Gateway 2000 - P5-120 (Pentium 120Mhz) from 1996.
An absolute beast, nearly 2ft tall!
First it needs an initial quick cleanup, it's grubby!
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 1, 2025
23 Inches Tall!
"Ooh, Matron!" 😲
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 1, 2025
Dirrty
*said in Christina Aguilera's voice*
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 1, 2025
Looking a bit fresher now, I will be taking all the plastic off the case and deep cleaning it, but for now, better!
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 1, 2025
VGA Card (PCI)
Dedicated Parallel Port Card (ISA)
Modem (ISA)
Unfortunately no soundcard, for now.
Lots O' Rust!
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 1, 2025
Ok, let's take a peak at the goodies inside:
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 1, 2025
Feline approval granted! 😺
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾
Motherboard:
Gateway 634784-608 Socket 5
4x PCI
3x ISA
Aug 1, 2025 at 3:21pmMastodon for Android
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 1, 2025
Matrox MGA Millennium 2MB PCI
+
2MB Memory Upgrade Board
=
4MB Amazing! 😍
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 1, 2025
ISA Parallel Port Card
Appears to be 8-bit, notice none of the 16-bit pins go anywhere (might be wrong).
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 1, 2025
8-bit Hardware Modem, notice that cheeky EPROM, XT-IDE potential 🤔🤔🤔
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 1, 2025
64K of potential!
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 1, 2025
I've decided that I need to start doing more videos and get over this irrational dislike for the sound of my own voice.
Here's the first power on test! 😳🤞
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 1, 2025
Floppy Drive Boot Test:
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 2, 2025
One thing I've discovered with this machine, something I've had with early Pentium PC's before- it's insanely fussy on harddrive solutions.
SD-IDE ❌
SATA-IDE ❌
It seems to only like either very small IDE drives, or simple CF-IDE, the BIOS is very limited.
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 2, 2025
I seem to have gotten through my larger CF cards, I have a bunch of smaller ones, <512MB. I do however have one 1GB, that I've managed to install an old version of DSL (Knoppix based) Linux distro.
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 2, 2025
The system works flawlessly, I'm super happy the Matrox is working well @ 1280x1024. There's something magical about using Linux on a system that's nearly 30 years old, it's fun!
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 2, 2025
A while ago I made a PCI based XT-IDE card for such computers, I used this one in another build, but I may make another, rather than using a software drive overlay solution.
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 2, 2025
So, I've been messing with storage options again, EZ Drive fails, and Ontrack was tricky. Using all the three options it gives to setup the bios. But looks like I've figured it out, here's the error I kept getting.
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 2, 2025
So, I had to manually set the bios options for the drive, to give me roughly the storage on the SD card (SD to IDE). Then Ontrack let me setup a Fat32 partition. Instead of formatting it in Ontrack, I used format on the Win98 setup. I'm currently installing Win98 as a test...
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 2, 2025
32GB SD BTW.
I want multiple os's on this:
MS-DOS
Windows 95/98
Also a useable Linux install, DSL Knoppix I think.
Fingers crossed this works and is bootable, very fiddly!
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 2, 2025
I forgot something, I'm not using the original PSU, so the front fan is not powered on, I've setup a usb fan to cool the CPU (wasn't too hot, but safety first).
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 2, 2025
So far, so good 👍
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 2, 2025
Looking good.....
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 2, 2025
Perfecto 👌
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 4, 2025
So I've discovered there's a way newer bios than the one this machine has installed.
I'm currently running:
BIOS Version 1.00.05. BROT
The newest version addresses issues with the HDD detection, it's:
BIOS Version 1.00.10. BROT
The bios chip is soldered, but I'm going to try it.
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 4, 2025
Perfect!
The update went well and it's now detecting lots more new drives, SD to IDE and also SATA to IDE.
There's an 8.4GB limit, but that's way bigger than anything that was available when the PC was built, so I'm happy.
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 4, 2025
Partition Magic 8 can see the full amount:
Show threadStuart Longland (VK4MSL)Aug 4, 2025

@Gammitin You might find under Linux, you can put a bigger drive in if you ensure there's a separate /boot partition in the first 8GB.

I've got a Pentium II laptop with this limitation: BIOS only saw 8GB (and thus bootloader could only read the first 8GB), but Linux could see the entire drive once the kernel loaded. A 160GB drive ran fine.

Show threadMiraAug 11, 2025
@Gammitin I once had a machine that had IBM-DOS, Win98, OS/2 1.3, and Slackware on it. Use PQMagic (iirc) for the multi boot options
Show threadGonzalo Nemmi Aug 1, 2025
@Gammitin Please do!. There's nothing wrong with your voice and t's perfectly well suit for the video! 👍
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 1, 2025
@gnemmi thanks Gonzalo! 👍
Show threadteacher ciatAug 7, 2025
@Gammitin really like your voice and delivery! You'd do a banger job at this kind of quiet repair-disassembly videos! 
Show threadGammitin (Ben) 💾Aug 7, 2025
@ciatmusings thank you, I've just done a 12min video update on this.
Show threadEloshaAug 1, 2025
@Gammitin Its attached to the local modem MCU, so no, not bootable for the host system 😉
Show threadPaul SomeoneElseAug 1, 2025
matrox nice :)
that looks like a fun machine to play with