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Broadband and Windows 95

shermans
Pro
Posts: 1,303
Thanks: 101
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Registered: ‎07-09-2007

Broadband and Windows 95

Silly question but in a good cause !
A charity with which I work needs a laptop to be able to participate in a specialist forum - just like this one, so ntohing complex, or technically demanding or bandwidth hungry.
I have an old Windows 95 laptop which would be adequate for simple dial-up purposes, but I am not sure whether it would work with a wireless router.  Does anyone have any experience of that ?  Even if it were slow, would it work at all ?  I would have to buy a PCMCIA wireless card for it, but I have seen those on Ebay for just a couple of quid new, because they are basically redundant these days.
So any experience of Windows 95 (if you can remember those days) would be appreciated.  I don't want to waste time giving them this old laptop if it is not going to work.  But in principle, I don't really see why it should not.  I have tried it with broadband using a PCMCIA network card and it works well, but obviously not yet with a wireless card.  So the question relates only to the wireless side of things.
9 REPLIES 9
HPsauce
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Registered: ‎02-02-2008

Re: Broadband and Windows 95

Your problem is going to be finding a suitable wireless card with drivers and a compatible mode to access the router.
I've got an old laptop that does work wirelessly. I believe it was initially Windows 98 (not 95) but I've updated it to ME.
The PCMCIA wireless card I use is a Cisco Aironet 350 (AIR-PCM352) and it only connects via 802.11b with WEP. I look after this very carefully as it took some finding.
I hope that gives you a few clues.
Peter_Vaughan
Grafter
Posts: 14,469
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Broadband and Windows 95

Does it have to be wireless?
You will have a better chance with a PCMCIA Ethernet card than a wireless card in terms of drivers but even so this may still be a problem as many manufacturers no longer have Win95 drivers on their website.
pierre_pierre
Grafter
Posts: 19,757
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Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Broadband and Windows 95

I actually got one from PN and asked for the lap top bits, got usb and PC card - BT version voyager 1065, trouble is min requirement win 98se, USB min Win 2000 or XP, and Voyager 2110 
Peter_Vaughan
Grafter
Posts: 14,469
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Broadband and Windows 95

shermans
Pro
Posts: 1,303
Thanks: 101
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Registered: ‎07-09-2007

Re: Broadband and Windows 95

Thanks. I already have a pcmcia ethernet card which works absolutely fine - interesting, the old Pentium 160 processor with 48 Mb RAM and a 2 Gb hard disk seems to work as well as my latest XP machine ! But unfortunately for the charity's applocation, hard wire won't work - it  has to be wireless.  Howeevr, someone has a W98 wifi card who has offered to let me try it out.  It will be intersting to see the result.
samuria
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Registered: ‎13-04-2007

Re: Broadband and Windows 95

With that spec of laptop it should run win98 and at a push win2k upgrading would possibly give you the drivers for the card if you cant get them for win95. You can get 98/win2k disk from the car boots £5 or less. The problem is its not worth bothering I dont know what its like in your area but around her you can get a pc with a 2 gig cpu for £20+ onthe car boot running xp and easy to get the drivers for.
shermans
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Posts: 1,303
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Registered: ‎07-09-2007

Re: Broadband and Windows 95

I had not thought of that - probably even easier to look on Ebay !  I have a W98 CD anyway and so could reinstall if necessary.  But I think a car-boot or Ebay is probably the sensible answer - sad, because I am still very fond of that old Digital (DEC) 95 laptop !
HPsauce
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Posts: 6,998
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Registered: ‎02-02-2008

Re: Broadband and Windows 95

With that spec it will also run ME quite happily; I've got an almost identical spec Dell doing so.
2000 might be pushing your luck a bit. Roll_eyes
MickKi
Grafter
Posts: 543
Registered: ‎30-09-2007

Re: Broadband and Windows 95

I would not advise going online with a Win95, or Win98 to be honest.  Neither of these were designed with the Internet in mind and from a security perspective they could be p0wned in seconds.  Sitting behind a router will of course offer some security, but not much (they open ports all over the place).  If you are really thinking of using this laptop then I would strongly recommend increasing the RAM to the maximum it will take and installing Win NT4, or Win2k.  You could also try installing a lightweight Linux distribution as per this thread which should be safer to connect to the Internet out of the box.