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Windows 95 Networking?

A

AMDXP

2[H]4U
Joined
Jul 9, 2004
Messages
2,631
I have an old 95

233 Mhz AMD k6

128 Mb of Ram

10 Gb HD




I was wondering could I buy a NIC ethernet card and hook it up to the net or no....
 
my family had a bunch of old 1ghz pIII machines and a pentium 200mhz and they all ran 98 and i put NIC in all of them...it was hell finding drivers and the install took a lot longer than i thought but it all went smoothly in the end and they've been going for 6 months without a hitch...i'm not sure about 95 but it should all depend on driver support. check driver support for your cards before you take the time to open cases and shit. let me know how it goes because i have 166mhz pentium/win95 laying around that i would rather my gf mess with instead of my iMac.
 
My question is why would you want to use Windows 95 when that machine could very easily run Windows 98se which is more stable and setup to do networking support.

:cool: Just a thought
 
Run Win2k on that beast. With 128MB of ram it will run decent. Even better if you follow a service optimization guide.
 
lol.. I'm not buying and popiing in a win2000 operating system.... for 200 bucks or so... and our best buys and compusas want 400 for them :rolleyes: U.S. Dollars of course...

:rolleyes:

I was just wondering... so its an extra computer that has net access...and yea...

it has USB ports... I'll go see if it works with my cable modem... how do I enable auto detect on WIn 95....
 
I second the thoughts on Win98SE or Win2K. Whatever OS you have laying around slap it on instead of Win95. You'll be glad you did.
 
Win95 is plug and play so it should detect most things automatically, no?
 
Although I agree with all the suggestions about using 98 and 2000, I think AMDXPCottonFire22 is just wanting to know if there's a cheap solution that will work with his existing setup without having to buy an additional OS.

Yes, 95 should work with many PCI network cards. Like Fletcherdotcom says, just check the back of the box first to make sure it says it supports 95. It's less of a hardware issue and more of a driver support issue. For sure the http://www.netgear.com/products/details/FA311.php is a well known inexpensive card that supports 95.

There are a few issues you should be aware of. You might want to check what version you have by right-clicking on My Computer and selecting properties. You should see "Windows 95 4.00.950" then possibly followed by an 'A' 'B' or 'C'. For the most part, versions prior to B don't support interrupt sharing, so you might have conflicts if you install a new card and there are no free IRQ interrupts. Versions prior to C don't support USB too well, so if you're looking to go with a USB solution, make sure you have at least version C (though I think there's a downloadable patch for B).

Also, most likely it's going to prompt you to insert your original Windows 95 cd/floppies when you add a new networking device, so be prepared for that. It needs to be the same version of CD that matches your installation version, otherwise bad things happen.

There's some extent of plug and play in 95, but if that doesn't work, go to the control panel into Add New Hardware and run a scan.
 
I had a couple old 95 machines that I thought I would add to my network,
but TCP/IP was not among the protocols available in the OS for configuring a
connection!* Having vowed sometime back to not waste one more dollar
on Microsoft products, I just loaded up FreeBSD and never looked back.

Sounds like an excellent opportunity for you to make the switch to a superb
and *free* operating system that will run efficiently on just about anything.
Between the capabilities of the OS, and the thousands of apps that come
included, you can pretty much do anything you can imagine. Oh, and did
I say that it is *free*?

Tom in Tulsa

* The apparent unawareness of the developing avalanche of internet users
was one of Gates' more boneheaded oversights
 
Just get a network card that supports and has drivers for Windows 9x. I never had any problems with 95 and networks.

And you're not getting a USB anything to work on '95 unless you have the B or C version, and even then USB support was flakey as could be.
 
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