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Win 98 won't network

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First post, by BuckoA51

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So I've built a Windows 98 PC, everything seems to be working well except I just can't get the darn thing on my home network. I have the drivers for the network card (SiS 900 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter according to Windows), the network card lights up and is seen by windows and all the lights flicker as per normal when attached to my network switch but it just won't see the router.

I've tried it with and without DHCP, tried manually changing the transmission rate (10 base TX etc, with and without duplex), nothing seems to get it to work.

Here's an ipconfig /all I did on the machine, as you can see I've manually added an address rather than rely on DHCP but still zip:-

windows98-cant-network.JPG
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Any ideas anyone? I don't want to surf the web on this machine or anything daft like that, just want an easy way to copy files back and forth between it and my main PC.

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Reply 1 of 7, by Deksor

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What do you use as a router ?
Have you tried to ping the router with the PC and vice-versa ?

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Reply 2 of 7, by Jo22

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Win98 also had a graphical tool, winipcfg.

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Reply 3 of 7, by BuckoA51

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Deksor wrote:

What do you use as a router ?
Have you tried to ping the router with the PC and vice-versa ?

Yeah, no response, and the PC never appears on the network map on my router. It's an Asu RT-AC68U router.

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Reply 4 of 7, by chinny22

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Win98 Should pick up an IP address from any router new or old.
How sure are you that its a SiS 900? Don't trust windows, it'll quite happily report the card is working well in device manager, even if its completely different card and not working at all.
If you are sure try some different versions of the driver, sometimes its a matter of finding the right combination.

One thing I would do is leave DHCP on, That way you know basic networking is working once you get an IP. If your set at static its just another thing that could be possibly the issue.

Reply 6 of 7, by BuckoA51

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Win98 Should pick up an IP address from any router new or old.

Yeah that's what I thought...

How sure are you that its a SiS 900? Don't trust windows, it'll quite happily report the card is working well in device manager, even if its completely different card and not working at all.

Not at all, I didn't realise that it would do that, here's some pictures of it as pulled from the rig...

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IMG_0061.JPG
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2.52 MiB
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1181 views
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Googling around suggests it might be a DELL card after all...

https://www.amazon.com/07C712-ETHERNET-ADAPTE … 5/dp/B00B87BJMM

Update - Yep, that's what it was, now working after I found some Dell drivers, thanks everyone!

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Reply 7 of 7, by chinny22

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good stuff!
Next step is where the real trouble could start...Windows networking (Evil laugh)

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