For those who are stuck on old computers

From software to hardware, breakthough to disaster, it all belongs here!

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Layzie Bone
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For anyone stuck, having hard times, having thier newer computer take a crap, or whatever, your guide to keeping your Windows 95, Windows 98 & Me computer safe and running great in 2008.

First of all how can I use this computer on the internet?

Look on the back of your computer, look for phone connectors, BNC (Coxial), and Ethernet. These are ways of getting you to the internet.

What do you have?

Do you have phone jacks? This means your method to get online is through a dial up modem. This means your internet experience will suck indeed but you can get things done, just don't plan for much of an evening.

or

Do you have a BNC or Coxial connector. Well this is the OLD 10 Base networking, which requires outdated equipment and may not work with some ISP's if there are any compatbility issues, so your next step is seeing if there are any cheap upgrades to get you going, upgrades will be covered later.

or

Do you have an Ethernet? Ethernet is for use primarly for broadband internet, such as DSL, or fiber optic. If you have a dial-up internet connection you still have to use your phone modem. NOTE: A common misconception between phone modems and ethernet cables are simply that ethernet cables are slightly larger (wider), than phone cables.

What Version of Windows does your computer run?

Windows 3.1 - Good luck finding hardware drivers, unless you have everything that goes to it of course. But beware computers from this age, 1988 to 1994 most likely, floppy disks and drives are almost always bad. Look through these computers thuroughly, these computers are likely to fail soon due to thier age, epecially in areas nearby oceans. May be hard to find ethernet cards or modems or pretty much anything for 486 PC's that use VESA bus system, as most of these cards are rare, and rare if you find one that works, more of a collector's item. So this PC, unless fully quipped and functional, is pretty much useless for you unfourtunately. Click on Drivers in Control Pannel. If you happen to have an older version of windows which is not likely, it is not possible, as far the OS goes to get on the internet, if anyone can get one going show me, and send me pics and your autograph.

Browsers Supported: Internet Explorer 5.01
Media Player 6.4

Windows 95 - First version of Windows that really sparked the dawn of the internet to the everyday person. Many applications believe it or not still work with windows 95. Windows 95 is not a stable or reliable OS when compred to Windows XP or Windows Vista, but can still function well when configured wisely, and really depends on the amount of memory you have. The next section covers this. If this computer boots up without problems, look at device manager, no matter what OS, look at this to see what hardware is installed on the computer, as well as the status of the driver, ones with an ! or ? may mean things such as ethernet cards. You can damn well bet anything you buy hardware wise is either not compatible or requires drivers to get it working.

Browsers Supported: Internet Explorer 5.5 SP2
Tested Software
Media Player: 7.1
Rising Antivirus
Sygate Personal Firewall
Yahoo! IM 7
Firefox 1.5.12

Windows 98 & Me - Mostly likely versions on 9x to be compatible with some new hardware and software.
Tested Software:
Media Player: 9
Rising Antivirus
Sygate Personal Firewall

Windows 2000 - No Support from Microsoft, otherwise good enough for the majority of software, very stable OS.
Media Player: 9
AVG 8 (Must have SP4)

Memory:

1-32MB of RAM: This computer is not likely to be able to run well enough to get your computer secure and be able to be functual enough for the internet, upgrades are generally not possible, as 33-pin, EDO, and SD-RAM are most common in these computers, upgrades are often not possible or expensive as the general availablity is less.

32-64 of RAM: This computer should run ok, may not able to use antivirus software or firewall software, as your browser will likely take up all the avilable memory, especially ones such as firefox, may consider using IE 5.01 for best results. IE 4.0 and below will not work with most websites as well as plugins such as flash player or java runtime.

64-128 of RAM: This computer should be able to do the job much better, don't get too carried away, might get away with 3 tabs in firefox, beware of the blue screen.

128 and higher: This will give you the optimal experience.


Links:

http://oldfiles.org.uk/lightspeed/lightspeed95.html

Very good site for Windows 95
Windows 98 & Me use Windows Update
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battye
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I'm not stuck on an old computer, but that is a great guide. Thanks for posting it Layzie :)
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quahappy
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I was going to say, "try a crowbar or solvent remover" but decided against it.

Great guide there. Surprising really how many people still have old PC's. It's not uncommon for a friend of a friend to approach me and complain that there PC is slow. Memory of 256mb is normally the problem and they are trying to run memory hungry programs on it. All I do is optimise them #(clean up registry, disk defrag, get rid of crap, etc) and that can make a big difference. Not everyone can afford extra memory but it's a lot cheaper than it used to be.
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