Gateway 2000 P5-100: Installing Multiple Operating Systems

Installing multiple operating systems on a vintage computer from the 1990's is not an easy task. There are major hurdles to overcome for this to be successful. The primary obstacle is getting past the requirement that requires the OS to be not only installed on the primary drive, but also the C: drive.

System Commander

One of the best solutions is to use a program that creates a multiple boot system. I believe the most successful and popular was System Commander. It was a boot manager/loader software application developed by VCOM.

System Commander had some unique features, that made intensive multi-boot users quite happy. It had a feature to keep partitions hidden, so when one OS loaded it could neither detect nor interfere with other OSs, installed on other partitions. This solved most of the problems involving primary and C: drive requirements. After installing multiple OS's, a menu at start up made it possible to choose which operating systems to boot.

I utilized this program back in the early 90's when I wanted to use Windows and OS/2. It was very successful, but I also remember how involved and cantankerous it could be. This hasn't change in my usage of it today.

System partition and boot partition

The system partition is the disk partition that contains the operating system folder, known as system root. 

The boot partition is a primary partition that contains the Master Boot Record (also called the boot loader), a piece of software responsible for booting the OS. It's located in the first sector of any hard disk or diskette that identifies how and where an operating system is located so that it can be boot (loaded) into the computer's main storage or random access memory.

System Commander replaces the master boot record with its own master boot record to control the boot up process.

Killdisk

Sometimes things go wrong. If the master boot record becomes corrupted, sometimes a re-partition and format will not solve the problem. I found that the best solution is to completely wipe the disk with a program called Killdisk.

Killdisk is powerful and compact DOS utility that allows you to destroy all data on hard and floppy drives completely, excluding any possibility of future recovery of deleted files and folders. In this case, the free version is suitable for use and can be downloaded here.

Setting up the disk drive

There are three major considerations for this system:

1. The PC's limit of four primary partitions will not be exceeded.
2. Each partition doesn't exceed 2GB 
3. The active primary is located somewhere on the first 2GB of the hard disk.

This last consideration is what makes my plan difficult to achieve. I would like to install four OS's in its own primary partition, but each OS will have to be placed in the first 2GB of the hard drive. My newly installed hard drive is 10GB. So with a 2GB limitation, I'll will only be able to use 2GB of the 10GB storage.

To regain some of this space, I'll have to be creative in how I make my primary partitions. This is my breakdown: 

• 62.6MB MS-DOS 6.22
• 901MB Windows 3.11
• 1GB Windows 95
• 1.99GB Windows 98

How I managed to squeeze out the approx. 4GB total was to leave a small portion of the 2GB to make a fourth partition. This allowed enough space for the install of Windows 98. I was still allowed to max out this partition to the standard 2GB limitation. Unfortunately, making these partitions are not easy, and must be performed using System Commander and in a very precise order of installs.

I also must erase all the hard work I previously made in installing Windows 3.11 and all the required drivers.

Installing System Commander

In order to install System Commander, a boot-able partition and OS must be installed. Because of the quirks of Windows 3.11 and Windows 95, a precise series of installs must be made. The first OS must be Windows 3.11

Starting with a fresh drive, a 62.6MB primary partition was created and made active. MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 was installed.

Installing System Commander is a quick process started by a double-click on install.bat located on the single 3.5" install floppy (a copy made from the original is best since the install will write on the floppy). After a series of prompts the program will install.

After the install, a system reboot will show the boot manager on start up.

Windows 3.1 is essentially a shell of MS-DOS, so it will not be shown as such on the menu. Striking the ENTER key on the MS-DOS 6.22 selection will boot back into Windows 3.1.

Creating more partitions

In order to install another OS, the SCDISK Utility must be used. This can be found in the SC\ folder.

This utility will allow the boot manager to "hide" the C:\ primary OS and create a new partition which is bootable and ready for another OS install.

Run the SCDISK Utility and choose Change boot status for OS install from the menu. The next screen will look like this:

Another odd quirk of System Commander... MS-DOS 6.22 is listed here as 5.0. Ignore this and select Partition 1. ESC to exit.

The next screen will warn that the bootable status has changed. Be careful not to select OK. A reboot from this screen is necessary for this to work. Either press CTL-ALT-DEL or press a reboot button on the PC.

Now a new partition can be made (in this case a 62.6MB partition) for another OS install. This partition I plan to have only MS-DOS 6.22 installed.

This needs to be repeated two more times for Windows 95 and Windows 98 to be installed. Unfortunately, the only way to do this is to install MS-DOS 6.22 and copy the Windows 3.1 files from the first OS partition install to these locations. An UPGRADE version of Windows 95 and 98 must be installed over Windows 3.1.

This is quite a bit of work, but it insures a clean copy of all OS's without Windows trying to rewrite files in any other partition. However, after each Windows 95 and 98 install, the boot manager will disappear. Only by reinstalling System Commander, will the boot manager be restored. During this re-install, System Commander will alert that a potential virus has attacked the boot manager. This is because Windows 95 and 98 has re-written on the boot record. 

After all the OS's have been installed, and the boot manager restored, the startup menu should show four OS options and a drive A: boot option.

Editing the Boot Manager menu

It's easy to edit the boot manager. On startup, Press the S key. This will bring up the Setup Options menu.

Choose D for the Description and Icon menu.

Re-naming and choosing the appropriate icons can be made here. After this editing, the startup boot manager (in this case) appears like this:

Each OS boots as a primary C:\ drive with the other partitions accessible as multiple letter drives.

Gateway 2000 P5-100: Installing Video Drivers

Windows 3.1 installed with a generic  640 x 480, 16 color VGA driver.

There was an option during the install process to install a driver from an OEM disk, but I did not chose to do this. Now, I would like to have my monitor display 640 x 480, 256 colors, but none of the supplied video drivers that come with Windows 3.1 will work.

The only way I'll know which video driver to locate will be to first identify the video card.

The Gateway P5-100 came with a S3 Trio64 video card made by STB Systems.

The S3 Trio range were popular video cards for personal computers and were S3's first fully integrated graphics accelerators. As the name implies, three previously separate components were now included in the same ASIC: the graphics core, RAMDAC and clock generator. The increased integration allowed a graphics card to be simpler than before and thus cheaper to produce.

Finding the driver for this card was not easy, but accomplished. I was able to find it here. It's a generic S3 driver for Windows 3.1.

Installing the video driver

The driver is contained in the  zipfile, w3117004.zip. By copying the contents to a disk, the driver can be accessed by going to Windows Setup in Main. Selecting Options and then Change system Settings...

By scrolling through the list of drivers, at the bottom choose Other Display (Requires disk from OEM)...   

Select the A:\ with the floppy that contains the video driver files. There should be a list displayed of video driver options. I chose the S3 Trio64/32 1.70.04 640x480 256 C driver.

The driver will install and then stop and prompt for the S3 Flat Model Driver Disk. I don't know what this is, so I ignored it and selected Cancel.

This produced a warning screen that stated that the install was incomplete. I exited the window by selecting OK.

I went back to the Change System Settings window and located the newly installed video driver S3 Trio64/32 1.70.04 640x480 256 C that is now in the list of available drivers.

When it's selected, a new window will inform that the driver is already installed. I chose to keep the current driver.

Windows then prompts for a system re-boot for the changes to take place.

The video driver works great and the system now operates at 256 color on a 640x480 screen.

Gateway 2000 P5-100: Installing Windows 3.1

My plan is to use a program that will allow different operating systems to be installed on one hard drive by using four primary partitions. I discovered it's best to start with my Windows 3.1 install.

Windows 3.1 was originally released on April 6, 1992; official support for Windows 3.1 ended on December 31, 2001, and OEM licensing for Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on embedded systems continued to be available until November 1, 2008.

Installation is simple. I have a six 1.44 MB floppy disks which makes the install. By running setup.exe from the DOS Shell the welcome screen will appear with directions. It will prompt you through a few screens in which I chose Express Setup. This will automatically configure the recommended settings for most users.

Once Windows is installed the desktop looks as follows:

The Program Manager is basically a shell program running on top of DOS 6.22. It's very much similar to the DOS Shell that I installed earlier. It's a MS-DOS graphical-shell-turned-operating-system.

Like modern Windows operating systems, Windows 3.1 has a bundle of tools and applications. The necessary apps for tweaking the system are located in Main. This holds the File Manager. It's a hierarchal file system stucture that allows easy access to all folders, sub-folder and files.

This can be seen in the following image:

The Main window also holds the Control Panel. This has various tools for changing the desktop appearance or making adjustments to various components of the system. The window can be seen here:

There are installed applications available in the Accessories window. Such as Write and Paintbrush. Paintbrush is still in use today (obviously upgraded) and I'm using my Windows 7 version now to re-size and crop these images. The Accessories window can be seen in the following image:

Re-installing the sound card drivers

Everything works well with the install, but there isn't sound. When I installed the sound driver for the Sound Blaster, I chose only a DOS install. In order for the sound to work in Windows 3.1, the install disks must be run again. This time when prompted, I chose to install the drivers in the Windows folder.

After this install, a new Audio folder appears in the Program Manager with some useful tools. These can be seen in the following image:

The most important tool for me is the Mixer Control. This is where the sound level can be set and by going into Options in the menu and choosing Save Settings On Exit, the start-up chime (the default tada in this case) will remain at the level chosen.

Gateway 2000 P5-100: Installing RAM Memory

The Gateway system has four 2MB modules installed in slots 0 and 1 making a total of 8MB available.

I've decided to increase the RAM to 32MB. Most applications will be fine running with 4MB in Windows 3.1 and 8MB will suffice for Windows 95, but I'd rather have more than enough since the modules are inexpensive in today's market.

I'm going to be removing all the old RAM modules and replacing them with 32MB (2X16MB) EDO NON-PARITY 60NS SIMM 72-PIN 5V 4X32. This is what they look like:

The following is some basic information about RAM from Wikipedia and other online sources that is pertinent to this machine :

What exactly is RAM?

Random-access memory (RAM) is a form of computer data storage. A random-access memory device allows data items to be read and written in roughly the same amount of time regardless of the order in which data items are accessed. In contrast, with other direct-access data storage media such as hard disks, CD-RWs, DVD-RWs and the older drum memory, the time required to read and write data items varies significantly depending on their physical locations on the recording medium, due to mechanical limitations such as media rotation speeds and arm movement delays.

The main memory (the "RAM") in personal computers is dynamic RAM (DRAM). It is the RAM in desktops, laptops and workstation computers as well as some of the RAM of video game consoles.

The advantage of DRAM is its structural simplicity: only one transistor and a capacitor are required per bit, compared to four or six transistors in SRAM. This allows DRAM to reach very high densities. Unlike flash memory, DRAM is volatile memory (vs. non-volatile memory), since it loses its data quickly when power is removed. The transistors and capacitors used are extremely small; billions can fit on a single memory chip.

What is EDO?

These RAM modules are EDO DRAM, sometimes referred to as Hyper Page Mode enabled DRAM, is similar to Fast Page Mode DRAM with the additional feature that a new access cycle can be started while keeping the data output of the previous cycle active. This allows a certain amount of overlap in operation (pipelining), allowing somewhat improved performance. It was 5% faster than FPM DRAM, which it began to replace in 1995, when Intel introduced the 430FX chipset that supported EDO DRAM.

What is non-parity?

RAM parity checking is the storing of a redundant parity bit representing the parity (odd or even) of a small amount of computer data (typically one byte) stored in random access memory, and the subsequent comparison of the stored and the computed parity to detect whether a data error has occurred.

The parity bit was originally stored in additional individual memory chips; with the introduction of plug-in DIMM, SIMM, etc. modules, they became available in non-parity and parity (with an extra bit per byte, storing 9 bits for every 8 bits of actual data) versions.

Early computers sometimes required the use of parity RAM, and parity-checking could not be disabled. A parity error typically caused the machine to halt, with loss of unsaved data; this is usually a better option than saving corrupt data. Logic parity RAM, also known as fake parity RAM, is non-parity RAM that can be used in computers that require parity RAM. Logic parity RAM recalculates an always-valid parity bit each time a byte is read from memory, instead of storing the parity bit when the memory is written to; the calculated parity bit, which will not reveal if the data has been corrupted (hence the name "fake parity"), is presented to the parity-checking logic. It is a means of using cheaper 8-bit RAM in a system designed to use only 9-bit parity RAM.

What is 60NS?

RAM speed is measured in ns (nano seconds). The fewer ns, the faster is the RAM. Years ago, RAM came in 120, 100 and 80 ns. Today, we are talking about 60 ns and faster.

What is a SIMM?

A SIMM, or single in-line memory module, is a type of memory module containing random-access memory used in computers from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. It differs from a dual in-line memory module (DIMM), the most predominant form of memory module today, in that the contacts on a SIMM are redundant on both sides of the module.

Installing the RAM

These two modules will go into slot 0 leaving slot 1 empty. The old ones are removed by pulling the lock down pins on either side out and then pulling the RAM module up and out.

The new ones are easily installed by angling the RAM module into the socket and then pressing down and tilting the module straight. You'll know when it is firmly installed when the retaining clips on either side snap into place.

The direction of the module as it's installed in the socket is important. If it doesn't want to seat in correctly, then it needs to be flipped around. In the following image, you can see how the notch is off center:

After installation, the computer should boot up with the additional memory. The new amount (32768 KB) is now available and it's verified on start up as seen in the following image: 

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Checking the BIOS, the RAM is detected in Slot 0 and is labeled as Fast Page Mode.

Gateway 2000 P5-100: Installing the Sound Card Driver

Sound cards and intstalling their drivers on early computers was generally not an easy task. There were many different hardware configurations and software incompatibilities. Sound cards didn't become common until the late 80's and became more user friendly as time passed. Once the sound cards supported Windows Plug and Play, they became easier to install.

My Gateway 2000 came with an installed Sound Blaster ViBRA 16.

The Sound Blaster ViBRA 16 was released as a cost-reduced, more integrated Sound Blaster 16 that supported Plug and Play for Microsoft Windows operating systems. It lacked separate bass and treble control, an ASP/CSP socket and Wave Blaster connector. Several different revisions of the VIBRA chipset exist.

This one is the earliest model, which featured an external Yamaha YMF262 OPL-3 synthesis chip.

This Yamaha chip was replaced on later ViBRA-equipped sound cards with a cost-reduced replacement termed CQM synthesis, which largely emulated the features of the Yamaha OPL-3 chip. However, its emulation of OPL-3 was far from perfect, causing considerable distortion in FM-generated music and sound effects.

Installing the driver

I was able to find a two disk install for this driver at Vogons Vintage Drivers Library. A compressed folder contains two disk images that require 720K formatted disks.

To make the install disks, I first had to format two disks using the following DOS command:

FORMAT A: /N:9 /T:80

This command will format a 720k disk in a 1.44mb floppy drive. /N:xx specifies the number of sectors per track.  /T:xx specifies the number of tracks.

Once I had the 720k floppy disks at hand, I used WinImage to make the install disks.

Installing the software was simple. I accepted all of the software's recommended settings. In the following two screenshots, the settings can be reviewed:

Included with the install is a diagnostic utility which searches for any conflicts in the install.

The utility also allows for audible testing of both wave and midi sound. Everything sounds great with this install and I have to admit, I'm amazed at how easy this install progressed. I was actually expecting complications due to my memory of headaches when installing sound cards in the early 90's.