HELP PLEASE!! How do I connect an old PC to Broadband?

Hi am a noob at computers at the front of the PC tower it says IM4 lol thats all I know.

 

OMG.. it's an IM4.. cyrix 266/300. (my webserver is one!!)

Probably an NE2000 compatible ethernet card.

suggested UBCD by pm to find what hardware is installed.

Is the HDD light on constantly?? if it is check the jumper settings on the dvd drive and hdd. These mobos have rather bad ide controllers with very slack ide sockets.

The cd drive MUST be master to boot a disk.. as slave it will detect but isn't selectable in the boot device list.
CS doesn't work on these boards.

For the cd drive.. go to "my computer" and then if it is there right click and properties.. autoplay on should start a disk when you put one in. The bios has drivers for generic cd/dvd drives,

These old IBM/cyrix boards aren't the most friendly, and with antique hardware installed like ethernet cards it's going to be a bit of a slog.

 

Hi all thanks for the help I think I have found out why I cannot get on the internet with this old PC. I am on Virgin Broadband and look what I just found on there website.

http://help2.virginmedia.com/help/getContent.jspx?page=help_internet_windows_98_ME_support

 

Yuck, Virgin Media, we used to use those, before realising that BeThere were a million times better.
That article however probably only applies to the USB modem, there's no way a router can tell what OS you have.

 

Hi thanks well TBH am a bit tired of trying to get the internet working on Windows 98 now. So what am going to do well its something you nice people can help me with really. How do I fined out my PC specs? As I want to see them so I can see what stuff I need to upgrade so I can install Windows XP on it.

 

Based on what Varnull posted it's going to be pretty much all of it. It'll probably be simpler and no less expensive just to build a new machine.

 

Hi thanks I a no good with computers so I don't know what a netcard looks like. I just pluged in a USB pen drive into it and again could not fined the drives.

 

Indeedy, and the drivers will be on a CD... Catch 22 eh?
You could potentially put the drivers required on a floppy disk by downloading them on another PC.

 

I just like to thank you all for all the time and help you all gave me. But what I just did was bought a dell minitower PC with Windows Xp on it and a DVD-RW and 1 year warranty and all the basic stuff. Its broadband compatible lol so this should be ok to just brows the internet lol? Again I thank you all for all the time and help you all gave me.

Edit: This Dell minitower PC I just bought is new and only cost £52 including p&p with 1 year warranty.

 

haha you'd never get a complete PC here for £52 ddp!

 

Hi its a DELL GX 150 it comes with a keyboard and mouse and windows Xp installed and its new.



It dose not come with a monitor but I have a spare Wide screen LCD Monitor anyhow.

 

Quite a bargain there, but it'll certainly be unused, any current PC system will be worth far more than that - XP is worth half of the price you paid.

 

Hi am sure its unused well it said its new anyhow TBH even if it has as long as its in working order and in good condition am not bothered as its decent price I paid.

 

That's actually BS from virgin there. I installed a 98 machine down the road 6 months ago on virgin cable. If they only support windows 2000 onwards how am I running linux?

That dell is a pretty good buy.. it's a pentium 3 around the 600-700mhz mark. Nice machines but usually limited to 512mb ram, very reliable...

As you know I'm a bit of a wizard with this old hardware, but lack of a working cd drive just about finishes it. No way to run boot diagnostics, and all the pc sniffing utilities that will run from usb are reliant on lots of the xp api.

ddp.. I have tried 98 last night.. mine has a 3com905c-tx card.. 98 has a heap of drivers for 3com.. even the 905b-tx which doesn't work with the card. I tried the 2000/me drivers and they error on an invalid dll as the file exists, but it's one of those that M$ in their wisdom changed but retained the name. The XP driver didn't want to know either.
Finally I tried the linux driver (by renaming it xxx.inf) and still it had unsresolved dependency problems.

Old P2 machine for internet = puppy linux or damnsmalllinux. But a working cd drive is needed because these old IBM boards have no way to boot from usb. It might just network boot.. PXI is the thing to look for in the bios boot order settings, but you will need the network hardware supported in the bios which it obviously isn't.

One thing tho.... if the cd drive doesn't seem to be working go into the bios and see how the drive IDE is set up. Auto often doesn't work, but cdrom always will

Sorry.. this time I have to admit defeat... probably could get it running with my collection of spares and my junkbox of old software.. Sad to say tho.. I play with these old machines because i have heaps of them and they come to me for free. One on it's own is a different prospect.. and not worth spending any money on. If you can find another cd drive from a scrap machine they do make very good learning platforms for networking and file server setup. It's sad really.. the I have a lot of affection for the old cyrix machines. (FYI.. the reason they won't run XP is because that chip had no L2 cache whereas the competition of the same era (my Grace.. pictured in the linux threads) from intel does)