At 19:51 03/06/04, Maureen Egan wrote:
>We received a used computer from an insurance company and was
>told it works well. However, when we booted up, we receive the
>following message: Disk I/O error, replace disk, and press enter.
>The computer is a Gateway, P5-133. What is the meaning of this
>error? How can we get it operating again?
Hi Maureen
Since this computer is likely around eight years old, the coin
sized Lithium battery on your motherboard may have died.
So it's possible that the hard disk drive is not being recognized
because the CMOS ROM chip on the motherboard has lost the stored
settings necessary to recognize the hard drive. This ROM chip
requires power (from the hopefully replaceable battery on the
motherboard) to save configuration information.
Here's what I'd do to see if the battery is indeed dead.
Enter BIOS Setup immediately after booting the computer. (When
you boot the computer, the screen should show what key to push
to enter BIOS Setup. If you don't have time to read the screen,
hit the Pause key to freeze the screen. Hit any other key to
continue the boot process.)
After you have entered Setup, see if you can restore the hard
disk configuration settings. (This may be as simple as entering
"AUTO" at the place on the BIOS screen where the hard disk
settings are entered.)
If you manage to get the computer to recognize the hard disk
and it boots into Windows 95 (for example) but the problem
returns the next time you power up the machine, you'll have
to replace the battery so that the settings will be saved
whenever the machine is powered down. (Unless you don't mind
entering setup every time you cold boot the machine to restore
the hard disk parameters and the clock time.) You could always
leave the computer on 24/7.
To see what kind of battery I'm speaking of, the Radio Shack
website shows 3V/500mAh/Lithium Batteries (for $3.99):
http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&product%5Fid=960-0432
(If the link gets broken into two lines, paste it together and
then into your browser.) Home Depot sells such Lithium batteries
for around $1.25. Many drugstores also carry these batteries.
You may find terminals on the motherboard near the lithium battery
to connect wires to a pair of regular 1.5 volt (for example,
flashlight or C or AA or AAA) batteries which could reside in a
battery holder.
Please check the battery from the motherboard on your computer
so that you know exactly which size and type you need. These
batteries are usually held in place on the motherboard by a
small metal clip. Bend or swivel it, but don't break the clip.
If you decide to remove the battery, be sure that you don't
"zap" anything on the motherboard with static electricity from
your fingers or arm. (Touch a bare metal surface inside the
computer case with your hand before you start and occasionally
after that to discharge any static electricity that you may
have acquired.) It would probably be best to unplug the computer
before taking it apart.
By the way, make sure there's no floppy diskette in the
computer. (The computer would try to boot off floppy if one
is present. Such a diskette might not have any boot files
on it.) I think you'd see a different error message ("non-
system disk") but you never know.
If the hard disk has gone bad, you'll have to find a small
disk drive to replace it with. This computer might need a
BIOS flash upgrade to use more than 2 GB of disk drive and
might never be able to recognize more than 4 GB or 8 GB.
You'd need to visit the Gateway website (or try a site like
<http://www.wimsbios.com/> to find BIOS flash upgrade files.
(You shouldn't have to pay more than a few dollars per Gigabyte
of disk drive space.) If you do replace the disk drive, I
wouldn't recommend trying to install any version of Windows
later than Win95 or 98 on a Pentium 133 computer.
I had one of the first Gateway P133 computers and the CDROM
drive (needed DOS drivers for Win95) and Ensoniq sound card
and 28.8 modem were not very good. The power supply was
around 165 watts. The original memory was only 16 MB of ECC
SIMMs. (It helped a lot when I upgraded the RAM to 64 MB
and then 128 MB. The motherboard was an Intel Triton TX430
chipset motherboard. I never found a manual for the board.)
I upgraded the motherboard and processor (first to an AMD
K6-200, then to a K6/3-550) after a year or two...long before
the battery would have died. I replaced the IDE disk drive
with a 4 GB SCSI drive after a few months, so I don't know
anything about the BIOS settings for the original 1.6 GB IDE
hard drive. I don't recall what key you need to hit to enter
Setup.
Regards,
Bill
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