[jazzy intro music] [computer buzzes, beeps]
Greetings folks, and would ya look at this late 90s relic?
This is the elusive Gateway Astro 400c, introduced in October of 1999
and shipping out to customers by Christmas.
It sold for $799 ordered direct from Gateway over the phone, online,
or in Gateway Country stores.
Ahh man I miss those stores, I loved randomly dropping by to see the latest machines and
try things out in-person.
Though I don’t recall ever seeing the Astro on display.
Perhaps I simply wasn’t paying attention, I was always drawn to the beefy Gateway Performance
towers – with their pricey Pentium IIIs, gobs of RAM, and fancy Nvidia cards.
But on the opposite end of the spectrum was the Astro, a neat little all-in-one system
taking up the same desk space as a regular CRT monitor.
It was part of that late 90s renewed interest in all-in-one
desktop computers, post Apple iMac.
With Gateway billing this one as an easy to use, internet-ready PC.
“The hardest part is getting it out of the box,” as the advertising claimed.
With a heavy emphasis on its budget-friendly pricing as well, acting as a lower cost alternative
to Gateway’s own high end all-in-one: the Profile 2, which cost $1000 more.
Not only did the Astro use lower end tech like CRTs and Celerons, but it also heavily
skimped out on the traditional basics.
Things like, y’know.
Ports!
There’s basically nothing in the way of legacy input/output,
only 4 USB ports and a modem jack.
And expansion slots, forget about it!
This is a plug-in “appliance PC” to an extreme, with the argument being that it’s
so compact and low in price that customers would be willing to live with the compromises.
After all, just 800 bucks got you a 400MHz Intel Celeron, 64 megabytes of PC100 RAM,
a 4.1 gigabyte Quantum Fireball hard drive.
A 40-speed CD-ROM, 3.5” disk drive, integrated Intel 810 graphics
and an AD1881 sound chip on-board.
And a 15-inch CRT display ideal for Windows 98, all built into a curvaceous 90s package
with smooth edges and a pleasing off white finish.
Seems like a deal!
Until compared with its biggest competitor: The eMachines eOne.
It had the same screen size, same form factor, same 800 dollar price.
Except it had a Celeron with 33 more megahertz, 2 gigs more drive space,
an 8 meg ATI Rage XL AGP versus an Intel 810 chip.
Plus, just about all the legacy I/O you could want and then some.
Including a PCMCIA slot and a built-in TV tuner capture device!
On paper the eOne was the better deal...
until Apple came crashing down on them and forced eMachines to pull it from the market
for its aesthetic similarity to the iMac G3.
Though if you squint, the Astro looks kinda like the Power Macintosh G3 all-in-one, known
as the “Molar Mac” from its toothy shape.
I guess it wasn’t close enough for Apple to care?
Whatever, eMachines was squashed and Gateway carried on with multiple ad campaigns.
Not only did they hype it up as a budget net appliance, but it was also sold as
“the PC with kids in mind.”
For $100 more, you could purchase the Astro as a Rugrats PC, or a Blue’s Clues PC.
Each with their own bundles of software and decals and things from Nickelodeon to make
the computer more appealing to kids.
-It's $899 with an Intel Celeron processor.
-"Brilliance! Sheer brilliance."
-Grown-up call 1-800-Gateway. ['Intel Inside' jingle plays]
-Also worth noting is a variant sold as the Gateway Neo, only in Japan as far as I know.
I mainly bring this up because dude!
Cow print computers!
Why this wasn’t more of a thing here in the US, I have no idea.
The world needs more cow print.
And before we go any further, huge thank you to Gabe
over at The Computer Cellar in Durham, North Carolina!
This Astro was given to the shop there to be gotten rid of, but he asked if I wanted
it after it was wiped.
And of course, I was happy to give such an odd thing a home so yes, thanks again man.
Unfortunately it wasn’t working, presumably why it was dropped off in the first place.
Just no signs of life at all.
After doing some online digging though, the fix may be pretty simple.
So I plopped it onto the workbench and began taking it apart.
Which, props to Gateway, because wow is this easy to work on.
Unlike some other all-in-ones, remove just four screws and the entire bottom comes off,
allowing full access to the internals.
Motherboard, drives, ports.
Everything but the CRT and power supply really.
It’s all packed beneath some metal shielding, and with a few screws that comes off too.
Revealing the guts of the computer, which interfaces with the Astro’s upper portion
via this edge connector.
A tidy solution!
If a bit goofy.
Like, check out how it handles video, there’s a straight-up
15-pin VGA port on the motherboard inside.
And that’s plugged directly into the edge connector
that goes to the VGA input of the monitor.
Great.
This PCB above the floppy drive also amuses me, acting as a little routing station for
the front microphone, buttons, and LEDs.
Consolidating everything down to a single cable that connects to the motherboard.
On that note, what we’ve got here is a Socket 370 FlexATX board,
Intel’s own variant of MicroATX.
Model number BP810 to be exact, a popular option from back then that you may have seen
on the channel before.
Y’know those Hot Wheels and Barbie PCs?
Yep, those use a BP810 as well!
Just with a few more ports installed and the original Intel BIOS.
Remember, all you get on the Astro is USB 1.1,
two ports in back, two on the right-hand side.
Uh anyway. What was I in here for again?
Ah right, it doesn’t work.
So from what I’d read it could be as simple as replacing the clock battery, a standard
CR2032 installed underneath the RAM slot.
Popped out the old one, plopped in a new one.
Plugged it back in real quick to see what happens and...
[CRT powers on] -Ahey! Hey!
[computer beeps] -There we go!
-Yeah that was it!
Seems these dislike booting with a bad battery, makes me wonder how many have been tossed
out over the years because of it.
But yeah, seeing as I had it apart I figured I may as well do some maintenance, beginning
with a little air compressor action to blow out loose dust.
And the CPU cooler can always use attention on machines this age, with the fan getting
gunked up and thermal paste drying out.
The latter certainly needed attention, it was hardened
and barely made good contact anymore.
But thankfully the fan seemed to be in decent working order,
just a bit dusty and needing a cleaning.
And since we’re here, may as well admire that PGA370 Celeron
in all its 400 megahertz glory.
Mm what a painfully average chip.
Whatever though, it deserves love too, so let’s commence getting rid of that nasty
old paste and applying some new thermal compound.
And yeah, an upgrade or two is doable with CPU and RAM here, but I’m purposely keeping
this thing as stock as possible.
This just leaves the long gone hard drive, and in the interest of period accuracy
I demand IDE spinning rust!
A brief visit to one of the LGR storage rooms will take care of that,
let’s see what we’ve got in here.
This little basket is full of tested drives, but I want one that’s not too large.
How about this 15 gig IBM Deskstar?
Perhaps not the best for longevity but at least I know for sure it works, so let’s
go ahead and give it a shot.
The Astro actually has a rear-mounted hard disk tray, which grips onto the drive and
screws in on the sides.
Then this accordion IDE cable connects along with the power, and that’s that!
The whole thing slides into the back of the PC, making for a highly accessible drive bay
complete with a plastic handle.
Not sure why Gateway chose to go the extra mile here but I approve.
Ooh and another nice touch, look at this!
Instead of adjustable feet or a folding lever, the Astro can be tilted up
using this spinning bar.
Rotate 180 degrees to angle the whole machine upwards to better view the display.
An amusingly effective solution.
All right, let’s start it up and see if our hard drive works by getting the BIOS configured
and–wait what?
Unless I’m missing it there is no way to configure the hard drive here.
Or like, almost anything.
This may be the most stripped down late 90s BIOS setup I’ve ever seen.
You don’t even get the usual “no operating system” message without a hard drive, instead
it says “NO ROM BASIC. System Halted.”
Well that’s fun.
Lemme try booting a CD and uh, hey!
Free game!
The previous owner left us Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo, an undisputed classic.
Gotta try that out soon.
Course we need an OS still, and since I haven’t yet found a copy of the Gateway Astro recovery
disc, I’m doing a standard Windows 98 SE install.
Which, thankfully, once I got the hard drive formatted went off without a hitch.
Zero unexpected setbacks, it was chill enough that I enjoyed the downtime cleaning up a
few scuffs on the case that had been bothering me all day.
The real battle began after reaching the desktop, cuz again: I don’t have the recovery media.
So I had to track down drivers and software individually online.
Luckily the BP810 was popular enough that most of its drivers were distributed by Intel
in one big archive.
The rest I found by looking up the model numbers of individual chips for the sound, modem,
graphics and so on.
Oh and I don’t have the original USB keyboard and mouse, so I’m just using some generic
modern tosh that sorta looks like it fits with the color scheme.
And with all that complete, let’s finally dive into the Gateway Astro experience with
games and things, over two decades later!
[music fades]
[computer powers on, things whir to life]
[drives buzz, computer beeps]
[Windows 98 startup sound plays]
Mm, fresh Windows 98 startup sounds!
Although these speakers don’t do it any favors.
They’re small and cheaply-made and not worth deeply analyzing
since there’s nothing remarkable about them.
There’s not even a physical volume knob.
The display follows suit in simplicity, with no external controls of any kind.
Instead it’s all adjusted through software using an Intel control panel extension, with
the typical color, geometry, degaussing and whatnot manipulated using the mouse.
An oddly enjoyable thing if you ask me.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t remember any of the settings anytime you run software that
differs from that of the Windows desktop.
So if anything runs at a different resolution or refresh rate, which is practically every
piece of full screen software, then it defaults back to the default defaultness,
which is all outta whack by default.
When it is adjusted properly though, well, I gotta say I’m impressed!
The shadow mask tube here is lovely to look at, with nice colors and refreshingly sharp,
readable text for its size.
I really have no complaints except that it’s constantly going back
to the crappy factory settings.
In regards to the graphics driving the thing, well,
it’s not the worst option around in ‘99...
But it’s also predictably barebones.
The integrated Intel 82810 as configured here borrows two megabytes
of the system RAM for 2D and 3D acceleration.
There’s no support for 32-bit color.
And I’ve also had problems with games like Slave Zero
and Quake III that won’t start at all.
Freezing, crashing, and general instability is commonplace on titles like these.
On the plus side, there's still a pretty significant chunk of 90s titles that’ll run decently!
Provided they’re Windows games or later DOS games,
since sound support is unsurprisingly lacking.
The Astro’s AC’97 SoundMAX chip only offers partial Sound Blaster emulation.
There is no AdLib FM synth at all that I can tell, and the only MIDI device is the ol’
Microsoft GS Synth for software-based wavetable playback.
[PASSPORT.MID plays, passably]
Yeah it does the job and not much more, just your bog standard software synth.
Still, it does work in DOS games like Duke 3D and Doom II, provided you’re running
them under a Windows DOS prompt.
[Doom II gameplay plays]
Pure DOS mode is a no-go for sound sadly, as there aren’t any TSRs provided with this
chipset, at least in the driver packs I’ve tried here.
You do at least get PC speaker sounds from the internal piezoelectric beeper,
so there’s that.
[lil beeps.]
But yep, the Astro is really at its best with Windows games from 1997 to 2000 or so.
Especially the sort of 2D games Gateway offered in its various branded bundles,
like Rugrats and Blue’s Clues.
And Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo, as was kindly gifted to us by the previous owner leaving
the disc in the CD-ROM drive.
Poor forgotten Putt-Putt, I appreciate you!
Look at all those colorful charming graphics, that stuff looks great on this CRT.
As do real time strategy games, with KKnD Xtreme here being a prime example.
The Astro’s sharp 15-inch display really feels perfect with an RTS from 1997, and the
underlying hardware is more than enough to enjoy all kinds of classic isometric games.
Though you do have to temper expectations
with later, more chaotic titles like Diablo II for example.
Hiccups and stuttering are frequent, especially as you’re being mobbed by mobs of mobs.
That lower end Celeron processor meets the requirements but isn’t ideal either, and
upgrading the shared 64 megs of RAM would certainly help too.
Even Quake II runs into stutters and hitches that interrupt the action, though it’s only
on occasion whenever a good number of enemies or effects pop up simultaneously.
Things tend to smooth out as more is loaded and the game goes on, until you enter an all
new level and the performance gets iffy again.
And finally, racing games tend to be pretty decent here, with stuff like Need For Speed
High Stakes having a bit of a rough, clunky start, but averaging out to a half-decent
level of performance once all the track and vehicle data is fully loaded into memory.
Again, upping the RAM would help here, no question.
But even as it is, the Astro is arguably a decent performer for what was billed as a
kid’s first computer or a standalone internet appliance.
Even if there were better-equipped machines at the same price point.
And that’s the Gateway Astro 400!
A short lived all-in-one from the turn of the millennium
that was as capable as it was compromised.
Going whole hog on USB at the expense of any legacy I/O was a ballsy move in 1999.
Plus the complete lack of expansion slots, especially with the held-back sound and graphics,
which of course weren’t upgradeable?
Yeah, it was a gamble!
One that doesn’t seem to have paid off considering the Astro barely lasted a year on the market,
and finding one today is nigh impossible.
But I dunno man, how can I do anything but enjoy this nonsense?
Its compact footprint and rounded form are delightful,
and that monitor really is nice to look at in-person.
For a first time PC buyer’s machine or a kid's computer type of thing, eh!
I think systems like the Astro have their place, especially back then when owning a
home computer at all was exciting regardless of its setbacks.
And I imagine if I did happen to have one when it was new,
I would’ve been left with some fond memories indeed.
While at the same time, kinda wishing I’d had a boring
yet upgradeable desktop tower instead..
[upbeat synth music]
And if you enjoyed this LGR retrospective, why not peruse some of my others about late
90s machines!
It’s kinda my thing.
And drop a comment below if you happened to have or use an Astro back in the day, I’m
curious how commonplace they really were.
And as always, thanks for watching!