Old Gateway Machine

Hi all

I've just started a new job and one of the things I need to do is upgrade the older slower machines as they try and squeeze a few more years out of them. The guy that this company gets all there PC hardware from has quoted me a price of £125 for 2 sticks of 32mb RAM for the old Gateway P5-133 machine. This seemed extraordinarily high to me so I checked on dabs.com nearest I could tell whilst they didn't have any 32mb sticks I could get 2 64mb ones for £45 putting the machine up to it's maximum.
Before I go to my bosses and tell them they are being ripped off does anyone know if there is any reason why the ram from dabs will not work in the gateway machine?
The dabs ram is 64mb 168Pin DIMM PC66 Non-Parity CL2
When I started in IT these machine were already getting on so I've not had much experience with them.
Cheers.

unless the old system uses some kind of proprietary memory type, you'r getting ripped.

Unless that p5 uses simms... apparently just because the model is the same on a gateway, doesn't make any of the hardware the same. You will have to check each board individually.

Well it very well could be that the memory does not work on any system BUT the gateway. Case in point I got an old IBM and it will only take a certain type of memory. And of course it was the most expensive one. :rolleyes: :D

If it's a P5-133 are you sure it uses dimm? Maybe it is simms? If that is the case MAYBE that price isn't too far off. last time I checked it was $49.99 for a stick of simm memory from best buy here in the states. ( I don't remember if that was for 16mb or 32mb ). Now you have to enter a manufacturer and model number to even get a price on simm memory.

best bet is to check what is in the machine now...but unless it's the latest and greatest ddr, almost $200 USD for two sticks is a bit steep. Even simms around here run $35 each..so about 50 pounds

Quote:

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Originally posted by Gollo
Well it very well could be that the memory does not work on any system BUT the gateway. Case in point I got an old IBM and it will only take a certain type of memory. And of course it was the most expensive one. :rolleyes: :D

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But most of those older gateways were nothing more than glorified clones. I bet this 133 even has an AT stile keyboard jack...

If the MoBo accepts 168 pin 66mhz DIMMs, then any memory of that type will work...

And a note:..if you have a motherboard that takes simms..on the old gateways..like the ps120,ps133. etc. you need 4 sticks of mem for the 4 motherboard slots to max it out.
if your machine takes dimms, it should only need two and only have 2 slots

Why not just go to crucial.com and see what they say are the memory needs of that gateway.

Edit:

I just went to crucial.com and there isn't an entry for a Gateway P5-133. I only see P5-100, P5-166/SIMMS and P5-166/DIMMS.

And the reason that the memory is so expensive is because both DIMM and SIMM versions require EDO RAM.

Yeah another thing to consider if it is dimms, are they sdram ( pc66) or are they edo?!? IF EDO I can imagine that they are rather rare/expensive.

Crucial do not list a P5-133 - they have the P120 and the P166 UK only... but I would buy the memory from crucial if possible... you can phone them and get free support, they are terribly helpful in the UK.

And if crucial doesn't carry it any more, try here

Quote:

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Originally posted by geoscomp
And if crucial doesn't carry it any more, try here

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Wrong country Geo... s/he is in the next county over from me!

Yeah..I noticed that..their international usps shipping is $9.00 USD

I have worked on a couple of p5-133 machines. there is is a 2 clock 4 clock memory issue on some of them. I remember finding out about it at memman. Go to the link and maybe this will help.here

I think I remember working on one years ago. it took standard EDO 72 pin SIMM memory if I remember. anyway if that is the case, I should have a bunch of 72 Pin simm memory within the next week that I would sell super cheap. pm me for details.

I agree with Shard some of the first Gateways to use dimms would take up to 32 mb of pc 66 sdram, if you wanted a larger stick you would have to go to edo memory which is much more expensive.

I have good/bad news for you. I had this similar issue on a GW pc like 5 years ago. There is a jumper on the mainboard that will correspond with the amount of RAM you are installing. 8, 16,32, 64, 128etc. i think you can only go to 64 on those if i remember right. You may need to call GW I have no idea where to find the jumpers at.

I am not BSing on this one, if it is like I remeber, this is what you need to do!

In addition to everything everybody else has said, I'd like to say that Gateways, especially the early Gateways are notorious for proprietary parts. I experienced this on my old P233. The reason why 32mb is priced so high may be because that is what Gateway is charging for them. (IF your boss is quoting a price at a Gateway store.)

BTW they are again, notorious for doing this. I once purchased a keyboard from them for $80, about 60lbs, that I found was being sold for $20 at the local computer store.:eek:

....and the $20 one worked as well as the $80 one they tried to get me to purchase.

Good Luck,
Orangeman

I just did an upgrade on that system - its an early atx system. \dude gut the system and get a new board cpu and power supply all you have to do is make a cut in the back for a second com port and u have a fresh system in an older case and it all can be done with new parts for under $200 US.

1800+ athlon plus jetway v266b board and 350W power supply is a winning combo

Thanks for the advice all, I did check on crucial's website and found as some of you did that they didn't have a menu for the P5-133 (typical!).
I did find a page that told me what I could have in the machine and it said that I had to have two sticks of ram the same for it to work (which I had assumed anyway) and they could be up to 64mb each of SDRAM. I found out where this guy gets his supplies from so I have emailed them as a private customer to see what price they quote me - if nothing else they should tell me what sort of RAM I need.
We shall see what happens but the IT manager was most impressed with the prices I found from websites (they have never bothered to shop around before!!).

Once again...check the jumpers on the mainboard. I remember going through like 4 different trips to a customer because of a RAM mismatch. It was the jumpers, the RAM was not the issue.

Give me the model and I will search for you.

i have that exact same motherboard/system.

i KNOW it takes memory in pairs, uses standard 72 pin SIMM edo memory.

i HAVE used 32 meg sticks in it, but never any larger size sticks.

UPDATE THE BIOS!!