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usb wireless adaptor

in addition to some fairly new PC's I also have an old PC that runs W-98 but not the SE version. it does serve me some useful purposes and I would like to get it on-line. the PC does not have an Ethernet card in it. I do have a broadband connection and a working wireless router on my newer equipment. can I use a wireless usb adapter on this old PC and expect to connect through Wi-Fi?

thanks,

JS

Reply to
JerseySax
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On Sun, 20 Aug 2006 20:17:56 -0400, "JerseySax" wrote in :

not the SE version. it does serve me some useful purposes and I would like to get it on-line. the PC does not have an Ethernet card in it. I do have a broadband connection and a working wireless router on my newer equipment. can I use a wireless usb adapter on this old PC and expect to connect through Wi-Fi?

No -- Win98 classic doesn't support USB. Get a cheap Ethernet NIC.

Reply to
John Navas

thanks for your reply. but I have to ask this: when you say "No

Reply to
JerseySax

John Navas hath wroth:

Ummm... would you believe partial USB support in 95 and 98? See the chart at:

formatting link
As I vaguely recall, MS added a bunch of functions to the USB driver in Windoze 98SE. It also went from USB 1.0 to 1.1. If the wireless driver expects to find those functions, and they're not there, then it probably won't work. That means that the wireless device driver will probably need to written specifically for the older Windoze 98 version. This might be possible with older (probably 802.11b only) USB devices, but I don't know of any offhand. About the only way I know to be sure is to try it.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

On Sun, 20 Aug 2006 23:17:01 -0400, "JerseySax" wrote in :

Oops -- I misspoke -- that comment applies to the original version of Windows *95*, not 98 -- sorry.

p.s. Please configure your Ouchlook Express to hard wrap lines to no more than 80 characters -- longer lines don't wrap properly in many newsreaders.

Reply to
John Navas

Thanks to all for the informative responses. I might buy one and give it a try. I suppose I can always retun it f it doesn't work.

Any other responses will be graciously accepted.

Reply to
JerseySax

Win 98 Classic/First Edition/etc doesn't NATIVELY support USB... Many manufacterers made computers with USB ports (non standard of course) and then included their own drivers to make them work....

If you have USB ports on your machine with the first version of win98, then you fit into the above category of vendor supplied extensions to the OS to make their box work, but they are NOT standard implementations for other stuff to work...

again, thanks for your input.

Reply to
Peter Pan

Even the OEM Windows 95 OSR2, obtained with my new Pentium II 233MHz computer in 1997 had native support for USB by MicroSoft. The MicroSoft CD front mentioned "MicroSoft Windows 95 with USB support". The Windows 98 upgrade I bought June '98 also mentions Universal Serial Bus in the manual. But Windows 98 SE support is better and more reliable.

Reply to
Eric P.

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