How do I get into the bios of an old 486???

I just got what was thought to be a dead Gateway 2000 computer with a 486 DX-2 (I believe that is all the call letters). I took the power supply out of it and it was all full of cigerette smoke (soot). I blew it out and voila, away it goes. It booted up fine, with the exception of a few com port errors, so I started removing cards that were not being used lol. Well now the only way to get the thing into windows 95 now is through the safe mode. I went to Gateway's sight, and found my mobo and info on it which was great, but there was no reference as to how to get into the bios. I know that on my current comp that I just hit the delete key at startup and it goes into the bios for me. But this does not work with the Gateway 2000. I have tried the ESC key, the TAB key, and the F1,F2, etc. keys with no luck. I am hoping that one of you that has had experience with these antique machines can tell me what I am doing wrong. These older comps where so finicky about what you did to them and I am just trying to get it going for my kids to learn about computers on. Thanks for any suggestions that you may have.

Also, I tried adding memory to the thing and it would not recognize the extra 32 megs of memory that I had added. I even removed the old memory and tried the 32 megs by itself but to no avail. Any suggestions for this problem too?

Hey,

Take a look at your motherboard, and see if there are any numbers on it, or a Gateway part number.
Also, what kind of slots are on the board and how many?

The 486 boards can have a combination of ISA and either VESA, or PCI slots on them.

Once I get an idea of what you have, we can then track down what needs to be done.

It will probably be a combination of keys that need to be pressed to access the bios.

It is the vesa board I believe. It is all ISA slots, but 2 of them have little brown slots behind them. *dang its cold in there* lol.
here is the extension to the sight with the photo of my mobo.

http://www.gateway.com/support/techdocs/references/motherboard/jx30g/jx30g2.shtml

I had a gateway 486-dx2 (vesa bus) & to get into the BIOS I pressed something like CTRL + ALT + ESC or CTRL + ESC AFTER the computer booted up (ie at the DOS prompt).

Thanks, Ill try that one. Those old comps where such a headache when not working right lol. You have to learn to be a semi-programmer to fix them from what I can tell.

Yeh, they can be a challenge alright. Especially for anyone who got into computers after the introduction of PnP & Windows. Back in the old days we had to set jumpers & dip switches for EVERYTHING & we had to type in commands to get the computer to do anything.

I've seen older mobos that access the BIOS by the delete key, F1, F2, ctrl-alt-s, ctrl-alt-up arrow (or down arrow, I don't remember for sure), etc, etc. Actually, if it's booting into safe mode, sounds like you should reload Windows