Can you ping anything?

Have you tried hooking it up directly to the modem?

Maybe your switch/router doesn't support 10Mbps.

Do you have a 10/100 switch lying around that you could hook in-between the Win95 machine and the newer switch/router?

Using a straight cable, not a crossover? Old cards didn't have auto-detection.

90skidJohnny wrote on 2020-07-15, 03:15:

[...]
Subnet is just using 255's
[...]

Do you mean 255.255.255.255? In that case it could be that you need to change it to 255.255.255.0

I have not tried going direct to modem, I can try that tonite

Cant ping anything, just comes back with request time out
Subnet is 255.255.255.0

Im using .. standard ethernet cable? Not sure of the difference, Its just cable i used in the past for other machines.

It's been so long since ive used networking on an older machine, but should I get some sorta network icon in my system tray?
Every now and then, ill see the computer's IP address show up on my router's device list, but then it goes away

Im not sure what the deal is. I have a win 95 laptop that uses a PCMIA card for ethernet and that just connects.

If i try to just let windows auto assign everything i get an "error" when i start my system that says the DHCP Server could not assign an IP. From google searching the resolution is to assign an IP, but that makes the error go away but I still have no connection.

90skidJohnny wrote on 2020-07-15, 03:15:

If anyone has any advice, please let me know! Thank you!

Ive manually setup the TCP/IP settings..

Hi, yes, there's something. 🙂
Please be careful when exposing it to the net.
I upgraded an old Win95 box for a frenemy of our family to Win98SE and it was infected quite quickly.
This was by the end of the 2000s/early 2010s, I believe.
Kerio Personal Firewall didn't help in any way, either.

So please make sure that the usual ports are blocked. This way, your PC stays safe and doesn't harm other users.

Also, you can use a Raspberry running Pi Hole, which gets rid of all the unnecessarily traffic (g. Adds, g. Analytics etc).

Edit: A Raspberry Pi is also helpful in a making a retro network at home.
Linux with Samba speaks both new and old versions of SMB (1 trough 3).
So you can share files very easily.