Need help upgrading gateway computer processor

[williemon]

I have a gateway p5-75 computer. I need to upgrade the processor to a min of 100mhz for software to run. The best I can tell, the motherboard is an intel brand "advanced zp" or a zappa as gateway calls it. It uses an intel 430fx chipset. The gateway sight says that the motherboard could support from a 75mhz pentium to a 133mhz, but will not say they all will. Gateway service techs say that for the 75mhz pentium my only option is intels overdrive 150 at $199.00 Intels site says that that board will accept 75 to 90, and certain revisoins will accept up to a 133, however all of these boards will it says will accept a 120mhz chip with the adj of the voltage switch along with the others you have to adjust to fit the different processors. I am a computer tech and have upgraded and built various computers over the past years, however its been only in the past 2 years that I have tried to upgrade gateways with generic (non gateway bought) parts. I feel that I could pop in a 133 and at least run it at 120mhz(I dont know which intel revision that board is) and that would suffice. My concern is, could or would gateway have had that board custom manufactured by intel so as to not accept a different processor? The board has the dip switches that intels site shows so I think this is not the case. Does anybody know for sure? If it will work, I have many machines I could upgrade for $45.00 each (cpu plus fan) to at least 120mhz so this new software we have will run. We must run this new software and it states it needs a min of a pentium 100. I have tons of these pentium 75s that are being used and will need to be upgraded to run this software. I will have to spec out the parts and cost and buy in bulk and I dont even have one chip to try with. HELP!!!!

[Josh]

Get A p-133 and test it. The worst that can happen is that it will not boot.

Josh

[Roy]

If it works, post a request for 133 orphans. There must be hundreds out there serving as lo-tech paperweights.

A friend gave me one to accomplish a similar upgrade.

[Isos]

Have you tried setting the external clock speed to 66MHz and see if it will boot? Before you try this, if you don't have a fan & heatsink attached to the cpu - install one.
Then move switch 8 to ON in the dip switch.
If you're lucky, it will have no problem running at 100MHz. (depending on quality of your 75MHz Pentium CPU)

If the software you are running perform a lot of disk access, 100MHz may be better than 120MHz anyway.

[craig722]

i just upgraded the same gateway MOBO,except
it was running a p5-133 pentium. The techs
at gateway told me i could go up to 200mhz
max using an overdrive processor. i have now
installed an evergreen MXPRO 200 which gives
me MMX and kicks the overdrives benchmarks
into the toilet. interested? oh the price--
how about $80-100 delivered to your door and
20 minutes to change it out and load it up.
another good thing i didn't even need a BIOS
change and it has run rock solid for the last 4 mos. check out www.evertech.com and
then hit www.shopper.com or www.pricewatch.com for net wide price comps. another resource for this upgrade although it
is roughly twice as much$$$'s is www.powerleap.com. But, they can get you up to 233mhz without a BIOS change and up to
400mhz for around $249 with a BIOS change if
you are interested. the difference with the powerleap over the evergreen is that you can reuse the adapter and just add a different cpu because it will take your socket 5 mobo and allow you to run pretty much any socket 7 cpu in it, but a BIOS flash maybe needed. check it out. and this mobo definitly supports a 66mhz FSB,so you would have to change the jumper and the MXPRO 200 has a built-in multiplier of three to get you up
to 200mhz. i downloaded the PDF on the zappa mobo from the intel site, but the board appears to have been modified for gateways purposes (to enable a board designed for a 120mhz to run a 133) so the dip switch settings shown in the PDF were a little off. when i initially booted the MXPro i only got 180 out of it.