Gateway2000 Colorbook

Preamble

Got this laptop some years ago, just got reunited with it after 5 years. It is a very capable DOS machine despite the constrained RAM, and I’m really eager to do some recreational programming with good ‘ole Delphi and Visual C there under Windows 3.11.

Hardware

Hard disk was half dead when I just obtained this; replaced it with SSD on msata to ide adapter.

Laptop has 4 megabytes of soldered on RAM and a proprietary extensions to add up to 16m, but I didn’t have a luck to find such a module as of yet.

There is a very cute tiny trackball that can be popped out at the front of the keyboard, surprisingly okay since I don’t have a RS232 mouse.

┌─────────────┬───────────────────────────┐
│ CPU         │ Intel 80486SX @ 33MHz     │
│ GPU         │ yes                       │
│ Memory      │ 4Mb soldered on EDO ram   │
│ Storage     │ mSATA SSD on IDE adapter  │
│ Display     │ 640x480 with 256 colors!  │
└─────────────┴───────────────────────────┘

Software

MSDOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 obviously!

Once I just got this laptop 5+ years ago I’ve installed some very old Debian there, but 4mb ram was very cramped and swap file was abused nonstop. I’ve came to my senses since then, realized I’ve already have a pile of unix machines and that laptop of that era wouldn’t have anything else installed but dos, win3, prince of persia and doom.

Screenshots

Photos