Title: Gateway 2000 PCs – Beware of CMOS Setup Wording
Keywords: Gateway 2000 CMOS setup wording
Date: June 5, 1996
KDB: KDB-147
Revision: 0.00
Author: MAN
Distribution: External
Scenario: Install an NT960 on a Gateway 2000 PC. Settings for the NT960 are as follows. A=DC00 P=300 I=10.
Apparently Gateway 2000 PC’s do not enforce conventional wording to their CMOS setups. This is how the Shadow Ram entries were worded.
1) Disable Shadow Memory Size – XXXXXXX
2) Disable Shadow Memory Base – xxxxx
1) Possible selections for XXXXXXX are: 16k, 32k, 48k, 64k, DISABLE
This is basically selecting the size of the base segment memory window to set aside from shadow ram usage. If disable was selected then that means all shadow ram is enabled. Say what? Check out the following!
Disable Shadow Memory Size – DISABLE – two negatives make a positive!
So in the above scenario, a selection of 16k was made.
2) xxxxx specifies where the base memory address window, in this case a 16k window, is to start at. We chose an address of DC000.
Another point of interest with the Gateway 2000 CMOS setup was the exclusion of interrupt usage from the PCI bus.
Any Interrupt required for an ISA card required to be selected as used. Therefore in the above scenario, we selected Interrupt 10 to be USED. If an interrupt was available for PCI usage, then it would be set to FREE.
End of KDB-147