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Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

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Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#41

Post by colechristensen »

quickthrowman wrote: post #36
sgarland wrote: post #5

> And you won’t get to brag that you own a computer from Iowa. South Dakota. Gateway was HQ’d in North Sioux City, SD. There is also a South Sioux City, NE, though to my knowledge no computer manufacturers have had a presence there. My dad worked at Gateway in the mid-late ‘90s and early ‘00s. Employee perks were pretty decent for the time; for example, he could borrow a laptop to play with and learn on at home — we…

Gateway was located in Sioux City, IA before they moved to South Dakota in 1990: https://medium.com/@madmedic11671/behind-the-spots-the-story... Sioux City is near a tripoint where Iowa, South Dakota, and Nebraska located in the Missouri River floodplain so it is natural they would have operations in two states at some point in its history. I just drove through here and spent a weekend in the area, Ponca State Park (…

It is effectively the same city in three states, but most of it is in Iowa. Of course there are separate entities because it's in different states but if it weren't they would have all combined.

Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#42

Post by niwtsol »

redm wrote: post #37
ecliptik wrote: post #23

The hippie copy mentioned was the ad my dad bought our first PC from. He was coming back from a business trip and asked the company computer guy to help him choose one for our family. We ended up with the 486DX2-50MHz "Integrated VESA System" [1]. Calling the Gateway 2000 customer support 800 number was my introduction to understanding computers and I am grateful to their staff for being patient with a 12 year old. W…

For a while in the 90's, I did Gateway 2000 tech support. It's nice to hear you had a good experience :) The mandate was to move quickly while also solving the customer's problem (which is harder than it sounds over the phone).

I was very young and I tried to upgrade the RAM on our gateway computer. I used the wrong type of RAM and fried (or broke) the motherboard. When I talked to gateway support, I think the person on the other end could tell what happened but took pity on me and allowed us to get a new motherboard under warranty. I had completely forgot that story until your comment here, thanks for the reminder on why I double check all the specs before rummaging around in there.

Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#43

Post by ecliptik »

Dwedit wrote: post #29
ecliptik wrote: post #23

The hippie copy mentioned was the ad my dad bought our first PC from. He was coming back from a business trip and asked the company computer guy to help him choose one for our family. We ended up with the 486DX2-50MHz "Integrated VESA System" [1]. Calling the Gateway 2000 customer support 800 number was my introduction to understanding computers and I am grateful to their staff for being patient with a 12 year old. W…

For DOS, your choices are basically DJGPP C compiler, or using the HXDOS DOS extender. But how well would Cave Story work on 50MHz?

I've am working my way through benchmarking it on a few different CPUS [1]. A Pentium Overdrive 83MHz gets around 30fps, and the 486DX2-66MHz around 20fps. Because the 50MHz will use a bus speed to 25MHz I am expecting it to be 10-15fps.

Even with a lower frame rate gameplay is relatively smooth with having a fixed-timestamp mode [2].

The biggest difference in performance is the sound backend [3]. Gravis Ultrasound and Adlib for some reason halve the framerate on all cpus and it's the next challenge to point Claude at.

1. https://github.com/ecliptik/doskutsu/blob/main/docs/FPS-MATR...

2. https://github.com/ecliptik/doskutsu/tree/main#fixed-timeste...

3. https://github.com/ecliptik/doskutsu/blob/main/docs/SOUND.md

Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#44

Post by mrloopex »

timcobb wrote: post #22
mrloopex wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s be clear: they were Lego-ing together parts from China. There were no mass produced PC components in the US by the 90s.

Probably not china so much as Taiwan, japan, other places

Actually yes China. Hong Kong specifically before the manufacturing boom moved to mainland. By the 90s Japan had lost its DRAM edge and was not making any PC peripherals en masse. TSMC was barely three years old in 1990.

Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#46

Post by ecliptik »

niwtsol wrote: post #42
redm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a while in the 90's, I did Gateway 2000 tech support. It's nice to hear you had a good experience :) The mandate was to move quickly while also solving the customer's problem (which is harder than it sounds over the phone).

I was very young and I tried to upgrade the RAM on our gateway computer. I used the wrong type of RAM and fried (or broke) the motherboard. When I talked to gateway support, I think the person on the other end could tell what happened but took pity on me and allowed us to get a new motherboard under warranty. I had completely forgot that story until your comment here, thanks for the reminder on why I double check all…

That's great they replaced it under warranty. I thought I broke the IDE connector once on the motherboard when re-connecting the cable because a pin was missing. The Gateway support rep calmed me down on the phone and that's how I learned about cable keying.

Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#47

Post by dosman33 »

incanus77 wrote: post #26

I worked at a mall Radio Shack in ‘98-‘99. A Gateway store opened up at the other end of the mall. This being the times they were, Radio Shack had partnered with Compaq to sell P2 & (I think) P3 desktops, the beginning of its downfall of selling other companies’ stuff and losing out to places like Best Buy. We used to emphasize that you could buy a computer with us and go home with it today, whereas down the hall, yo…

Before I worked at TSS doing in-home PC repair, I did a short stint at Radio Shack and got the Compaq experience you described. I remember going to the introduction event for the Compaq roll-out into Radio Shack stores, I was sitting in a large hotel ballroom with like 100 other Radio Shack sales folks. The Compaq guy was asking questions from the audience and I was literally the only person there who could answer questions like "what motherboard interface did the Pentium 2 use" (it was the first cpu to use a slot (Slot 1) versus a socket which was a big deal back then). I had dropped into the event straight after class at ITT, so I was just wearing casual attire and didn't think anything of it. Apparently that was a mistake, one of the higher up sales guys got offended and complained to my manager. I was offended that apparently no one else there knew anything technical at all, lol. Thankfully I left that job not long after.

I was spending all my time learning computers, and I was starting to build systems for family and friends. Once I was lent out to another Radio Shack store that was short handed and the other salesmen kinda lamented not being able to afford the Compaq a customer was buying. Afterwords, I tried to explain to him that I could easily build him a nicer system for a fraction of what we sold Compaq's for. He was still not interested, I think he was way more broke than I realized. I grew up broke too, but I also had my eyes set on improving my situation. Was kind of a wake-up-moment that most people around me had minimal ambition about this.

I also remember having to push cell phones at RS then too, I think we pushed a lot of Sprint phones. I was still fairly young and was just learning about phreaking, but I remember my boss telling people Sprint phones couldn't be cloned like analog cell phones could back then (I disagreed, but I had to agree it was harder at least). It was apparently a thing that your analog cell phone could be cloned over the air and suddenly your bill would be crazy that month. I only ever heard rumors about that kind of thing happening.

Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#48

Post by nilamo »

Aurornis wrote: post #19
to11mtm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's actually a mortgage company that does worse; They call it the 'People Promise', and it sounds like a bonus, but; 1. It's actually a loan. 2. If you leave or are terminated at any point for the period, you have to pay back the ENTIRE loan amount. 3. Because it's a loan, if you -do- survive employment through the term, guess what, you now have to pay tax on the 'forgiven loan'. 4. If you don't take it, you don'…

Why not name the company?

UWM, United Wholesale Mortgage. Their location near me (Detroit suburbs) has closed, but not after getting an awful reputation that's somehow worse than Quicken or Rocket Mortgage.

Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#49

Post by Sharlin »

mrloopex wrote: post #44
timcobb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not china so much as Taiwan, japan, other places

Actually yes China. Hong Kong specifically before the manufacturing boom moved to mainland. By the 90s Japan had lost its DRAM edge and was not making any PC peripherals en masse. TSMC was barely three years old in 1990.

Technically Hong Kong wasn't China back then.

Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#50

Post by fenestella »

The cow-print branding was a masterclass in building an approachable identity for a commodity business, but these specific spreads really highlight how weird 90s tech marketing was. I'd forgotten they tried to lean so hard into the 'cowboy' persona for a PC builder. It's wild to see how much margin they must have had to afford these multi-page glossy inserts in every issue of PC Magazine.
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