Get a firewall? An old version of ZoneAlarm will probably work.

Well i thought about it, but i guess an old firewall wouldn't be so perfect as it would still allow the computer to communicate with the outside world in a number of ways i believe.
One thing that occurs to me is to tackle a bit around with the router and find a way for letting the win98 machine to exchange data with only the desired game server IP and nothing else.

Agnitum Outpost Firewall 1.0 is much lighter.

I use 3.11/95/98/2000 you name it online.
Never had a problem. In fact most attacks don't bother targeting things that old now

I agree.
Your fine if your behind a decent router with a firewall.
Nothing really targets 9x now.

If your playing old style Direct play games IP to IP like Jedi Knight or something, you don't have anything to worry about really, don't you trust the guy your playing with if you gave him your IP?

I connect most of my PCs directly to the internet regardless of age. The chances that someone would want to attack a computer with windows 98 on it are slim, and even if they did it wouldn't mean I'd lose a lot of data or anything.

AlphaWing wrote:

don't you trust the guy your playing with if you gave him your IP?

Well, i would most like play on some server full of people, like cooperation or deathmatches 😀

Tr3vor42532 wrote:

I connect most of my PCs directly to the internet regardless of age. The chances that someone would want to attack a computer with windows 98 on it are slim, and even if they did it wouldn't mean I'd lose a lot of data or anything.

Well if i was to go completly paranoid i would assume that there are cleverly automated attacks to older OS's that when installed on a old machine, spread onto other modern systems in the same network. But this is just me being paranoid.

I guess i'll install a light firewall, afterall i have 768mb of Rambus memory and a 1.7Ghz cpu on that machine which should be plenty for Windows 98 and a simple firewall and antivirus.

If you're already behind a router, then I wouldn't worry about it. Nothing can reach that PC unless it's in reply to a conversation that it started. Even if you install a local firewall, it's going to have to allow the same, otherwise the games wouldn't work. But still, a lightweight firewall won't add any noticeable load. Antivirus is what really slows down a computer, but if you don't mind it then go for it.

The only virus I've ever had came from me opening an insecure web server to the internet back around 2002 or so. That was an automated attack, but that was only possible because it was a server with a well known exploit, connected directly to the internet through a modem, and sitting there receiving requests from anybody. A game machine sitting behind a NAT router isn't going to have exposure except to whatever game server/peer it's playing games with. I suppose if the server was hostile and was programmed to utilize some known exploit in that game's networking, then it could be a risk. I think the odds are slim though.

To be really safe, you could firewall that PC so that it can't talk to the rest of your network, just the internet only. The most ideal way to accomplish that would be with an external firewall, not something that's installed on the machine in question. This does mean transferring files is sneakernet, though. In that case CDs would be safest, but regardless, make sure USB autorun is disabled completely on both ends (requires registry or poledit settings in XP, I don't know how it works in Win98).
I've thought about isolating an internet-only subnet for visitors using my wireless router. I trust my wired machines, but wireless == random friends/family with whatever viruses they've installed this month.