I have an old Win98SE computer. My son has an XP and I also have a
company laptop. I decided to set up a wireless LAN in my house and move
up from dial-up to Cable. You can choose either cable or DSL. Some
providers want you to use their modem. Others will let you buy your own.
That is something you will need to determine. Because of the age of my
desktop, I decided to have it connect directly into one of the ports on
the router I bought. I went for a Linksys (wrt54g). It can work as 811.b
or g but I have it set for g mode. You use the browser on your desktop,
through the NIC card (an ethernet card in your WIN95 pc that will
connect to a port on your router) to initially talk to the router and
set it up. At first keep it simple (keep the protections off until you
get everything up and running the way you want it). Then you can turn
off broadcasting the SSID and enabling WEP or WPA and other nifty
features to keep others from snooping or using your LAN. The desktop
should connect immediately to the internet. The 4 port switch in the
router provides access to the internet without any wireless conditions,
therefore, if your desktop has a NIC (Network Interface Card) you are in
business. If not, you should be able to buy an inexpensive PCI NIC at
any computer parts store (some go for as little as $9). The wireless
laptop can now be configured to look for your wireless network.
Instructions with the Linksys router make it easy to set up the wireless
side. Your laptop computer manual should give you pretty good info on
setting up your wireless adapter to connnnnect to your network. Like I
said, once your laptop is talking to the internet, you can then
institute the wireless protections to encrypt and hide your LAN from
others. It isn't too difficult to do.

Jean Bourvic

Lewis c Emerson wrote:

>I recently purchased my wife an Acer lap top which came with wireless
>capability as a built-in.  One the label it says "802.11 b/g wireless
>LAN".  I'm sure the store from which it was purchased will sell me stuff
>to get it up and running , but I'd like to learn a bit more before
>dealing with them.  I'd like to make it wireless along with my ten-year
>old desktop machine running Windows-95.  I need to know just what to buy
>to get them both up-to-date and wireless connected.  There are just too
>many "routers" and "network cards" out there and I have no idea about
>what is or is not compatible with what the Acer has and what my older
>machine surely doesn't have, but must need. Can someone help or advise
>me, or direct me to a website that will educate me in the basics? Thanks.
>
>Lewis Emerson
>
>        The NOSPIN Group has added a new feature on our website,
>           web based bulletinboard for questions and answers:
>              Visit our sister website at http://nospin.com
>
>
>
>

         PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download
                     visit our download web page at:
                  http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml