How easy is it to connect an old pc to broadband?

[KoPo]

DH has been going on about buying an old windows 98 desktop pc for ages (he refers to it as a legacy pc or something along those lines).

I have found one and bought it as a surprise for him but want to give it to him all working and online. It has only ever been used on an old dialup connection before but does have an ethernet port on the back.

Am I heading for disaster or is this going to be easy?

[BaffledSomeMore]

Mostly easy if you can use a wired connection.
Getting a wireless network adapter with the right drivers might be trickier.

[NetworkGuy]

Agree with BSM - network connection will likely be best using the ethernet cable rather than anything wireless {unless you can find a suitable wireless EIDE card - USB may also be a bit flaky on Win98, so printing could be a problem if that's 'wanted' too}.

If necessary, get a pair of HomePlugs to provide ethernet cable connection between PC and the internet router (HomePlugs use the house mains power wiring to link room to room).

[borisgudanov]

Why does he have to have Windoze 98? If you were actually going to use hardware like this for anything serious nowadays you'd pretty well have to put Linux on it. If he is just "into the experience" of using old stuff then all sorts of trouble may be expected getting drivers to work with modern hardware. It should have no trouble connecting via the ethernet port via wire to a router though. Does your printer have Win 98 drivers available? I've got a printer upstairs that's so old you can't get a Windoze 8 driver for it so we can only use it from the Windoze 7 and Linux boxes.

[SaucyMare]

as boris said, if he is getting it because he likes all that shit, he will love the game of getting it connected.

Just as a warning, it recently took me 3 days+ to get my windows vista PC rebuilt, downloading patches, hunting down the correct version of drivers etc.

[SaucyMare]

and i stil haven't got itunes fixed (see my post here)