Unable to connect my windows 98se to the internet?

[lac668]

Hello,
I have an old computer that is Windows 98SE. It uses a dial-up connection, but I don't have a phone line anymore so I've been trying to find another way to connect it to the internet. I've tried connecting it to the internet by connecting it to my Linksys wireless broadband router but that doesn't do anything. I also have a wireless notebook adapter that I've also tried to use but the driver needs to be reinstalled or updated and I don't know how to do that. I've lost the installation disk that came with it also. Do I need to buy anything to make it work? Can I download the driver for the adapter online, how would I go about doing that? I'm not very tech savvy. Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

 

[Emerald]

do the computer have a ethernet network card that you could use to connect to the Linksys via network cable? Are the drivers for the card installed?

 

[lac668]

I believe I do. I went to device manager, clicked on network adapters (where I assume it lists any ethernet cards I have) and under that it shows that I've got an AOL adapter, dial-up adapter, IrDA v3.0 fast infrared port, and SMC EZ CardBus III 10/100pc card. So I click on each one and click the driver tab, and it has the option to update driver, which I assume I need to do if I want the cards or adapters to work. So I do that and it says Windows will search for updated drivers in its driver database on the hard drive, and gives a list of locations to choose from. I'm not sure which one I'm supposed to select so I just click next, and when I update the driver for each one, it says "the best driver Windows found is already installed for this device. Click back to install a different driver or click next to continue using this driver." Confusing.. if it's already installed then why doesn't the internet work? Are the drivers just old and outdated and I need to buy or download and install a new network card or adapter? I've read that you can download the driver you need on the computer's manufacturing site, but I'd have to download it on a different computer, not the one I need it on because it has no internet..

 

[Emerald]

can you connect the SMC network card that is sticking out of your laptop to the router via network cable?

do you have internet access when you do that?

 

[lac668]

I've tried doing that before, but it didn't seem to be working. I don't know if it's because I'm using the wrong cables or what, I don't think I am. But I've figured out how to move the driver I need for my wireless adapter from one computer to the other, I didn't know I could just download the driver from the computer manufacturer's website and then put it on a flash drive. So I'm just gonna try that out and see if it works. Thank you for your help