Asking for trouble with W98?

[The late XV105]

My wife's parents have a ten year old 400Mhz Dell computer with paltry 256MB RAM and 10GB HDD (50% free), running Windows 98. The computer has only been used for a couple of those ten years, and firing it up shows it to be free of clutter and apparently in good health. Originally intended for e-mailing, it fell in to disuse because dial-up problems in their Czech town were frequent and beyond their extremely limited computing skillset to troubleshoot; even booting up and opening Outlook Express was done every time by religiously reading instructions that I wrote!

With the falling price of broadband however they want to subscribe to their local Czech ISP and become stříbrná surfaři (Silver Surfers), albeit with no desire to web-browse. With no local "Telediscount" to benefit from to call us cheaply in UK, they even want to use an IP phone having had the principle of operation explained to them.

All well and good, but they don't want to buy a new PC or to accept my offer to buy one for them. Not even just the nice shiny box for a couple of hundred notes, reusing screen, keyboard, and mouse; as far as they are concerned they have a PC, it's hardly been used, and they want to keep it!

I would use the existing (and known to be working) ethernet card to connect to the model of ADSL modem that I know their local ISP will provide, but before I invest time in getting MSN Messenger to work, trying to install a webcam, and so on, am I on a hiding to nothing? Bear in mind that I am their PC support when it all goes Pete Tong, but I am 1,300 miles away in another country.

All they want to use the PC for is

e-mail
Attachment and detachment of .jpg files to and from e-mail
Saving .jpg files from camera to PC (I have the appropriate drivers for W98)
MSN Messenger chat, voice, and video via webcam
CD and DVD playing via the existing drive
Backup of .jpg files to DVD-R (the burner works fine)Nothing else.

Many thanks.

[MacBoero]

I wouldn't like to try and support a W98 machine from afar. In my experience W98 was fast becoming a liability even when still using a dial-up connection. My sister had a W98 machine until a few years ago, and needed constant attention. It had very little ability to take care of itself, W2K would be a far better bet, as the built in tools are better at keeping the machine healthy, and all the various free AV tools are more likely to be supported with W2K. The processor speed is going to make it feel sluggish though, and you definitely want to stick at least another 256MB of RAM in there. 10GB hard drive will be fine, but if you making the trip to sort everything out, the cost of new drives is so cheap, I think I'd put a new one in. It's a shame it's a Dell, had it been a vanilla machine, I'd be tempted to find a second hand motherboard with a beefier processor to stick in there. I not sure its all that easy with a Dell as they tend to tinker with the standard chassis layouts.

[Saab Dastard]

A few observations:

I'm all for retaining hardware as long as possible, by judicious upgrading - I'm currently writing this on a 600MHz Compaq Deskpro, albeit with a few improvements (memory, HDD, DVD-CDRW, video card, USB 2 card, sound card all upgraded).

If it can already do what is on the list (messaging and internet connection excepted), then fine.

However, anything that puts much load on the CPU and memory is probably going to kill it - e.g. DVD playback, unless there is a hardware decoder on board. I suspect also that video via webcam could also struggle. I'd be delighted to be proved wrong!

Storing jpgs will quickly fill the hard disk - at the very least, an external disk would be essential, despite archiving onto DVD.

Adding any peripherals (webcam, external disk, etc.) will be via USB, and a PC of that age will have the very slow USB 1 - OK for keyboards and mice, but not for high data throughput.

It will be a struggle to upgrade anything, as the PCI version is probably 2.0, and most cards now require 2.1 or usually 2.2. The largest internal HDD that the BIOS will recognise will be 60 or 80 GB, I believe, although that will be a massive improvement - provided you can find one! Similarly with software - you may struggle to find drivers and applications for Win98.

Finally, I would strongly suggest that a hardware firewall / switch / router be placed between the PC and the ADSL modem, as the security capabilities of Win 98 are virtually non-existent.

SD

[The late XV105]

Thank you, Macboero.
More or less what I suspected, though I quietly hoped to be told otherwise.

I'm actually with my inlaws in deepest rural CZ* until Monday next week, so now is the time to sort things out, hence the timing of my post.

I think I will pay a visit to the (helpful from previous experience) PC shop in town, with the Dell in my arms, and ask what they can do to upgrade the motherboard given the other components installed. Ideally, I would like to end up with a mobo running XP Pro since I have an unused licenced copy, am very familiary with tweaking XP Pro, and find it highly stable, but guess this is in the realms of science fiction given the humble starting point!

If this is a non starter as expected - especially given your Dell observation - then I will see what second hand machines they have and compare prices with buying a shiny new processor unit in the UK (tends to be cheaper than CZ) and shipping to CZ for installation the next time I am here.

Once I have this info, I will translate your post for them and give the options!


Thanks again,
XV105

Deepest rural CZ, several kilometres from the exchange, where neighbours are getting 4MB/562KB ADSL versus my "upto 8MB=2MB actual"/444KB on a good day in the UK, living as I do just 150 metres from the exchange...

I expect that a low contention ratio here in CZ is part of it, but it still looks like the service in my small UK village is being throttled.

[The late XV105]

Thanks too, Saab Dastard.

Although not written in my post, I had thought of .jpg storage - which would be solved by a spare 160GB LaCie USB HDD that I have - but had completely forgotten that the version of USB likely to be supported would be 1.0. Sure enough, after a check, it is, thus (from my own experience too) killing the webcam idea (let alone from CPU), as well as making .jpg backup slow (probably not a problem).

The need for a hardware firewall is a good call to make, but I think I'm sorted; I know the model of ADSL modem that the ISP provides and that it includes a 4 port ethernet switch and DHCP server. From being connected to a neighbour's WiFi network and taking a crafty look at the setup of their identical modem I can see that it contains a decent firewall, too.

So, I think I'll stick with the documented plan, and take it from there. Expectation is that I will be buying a new or secondhand processor unit.

Cheers!
XV105

[JamesT73J]

At work we get our hands on a lot of ancient kit that is fun to play around with. The PC you mention should be very nice on Win98 (I was a very late convert to XP from '98, doing so in 2003).

Shame about the camera software otherwise I'd say try Puppy Linux as it's great on old hardware...however..

The one thing I have observed is that most modern apps (free antivirus / firewalls etc) tend to have whopping memory footprints that can absolutely stuff an old machine; also Win 98's memory handling could be a bugger when viewing image files (lots of pictures on a cd) on removeable media - basically the RAM would fill up very rapidly during pre-fetch and then the machine would thrash itself to a standstill.

USB support is patchy, can be tricky to get working, but by no means impossible. I found Microsoft's tech notes on USB in Win98 utterly confusing.

The firewalls on some domestic routers can be rather permissive; it may be worth having a look at the rules / access lists to see if you can exercise more control if you're not going to bother with a software firewall.

As for the HD, go to your local tip. Odds are you can find a perfectly good working HD that is bigger than the current one.

J

[Hasselhof]

I'd highly recommend ditching Win 98 and trying Xubuntu (http://www.xubuntu.org/). Its a version of the highly successful Ubuntu Linux os that uses XFCE as its desktop environment. XFCE is very light weight and will run on very limited system resources such as those you've listed. For photos simply install Picasa (http://www.picasa.com) (free), for video chat and VOIP install Skype (http://www.skype.com) (free) and for all your other requirements just use the programs that come installed with the operating system.

Its free and comes in as a LiveCD so you can download it, burn it & test it without having to go the whole way and install it on your parents machine.

Why use an ancient, unsupported and above all broken operating system when you can install and use an operating system that is still being actively developed and supported that does everything on your list as simply as windows would?

Good luck :ok:


(PS. If you're going to be providing the tech support from a great distance, look into vnc forwarding over an ssh tunnel, its a godsend)

[green granite]

For info: I had a 400MHz dell which, when I replaced it, went upstairs for my wife to use. It was on win98 with 500meg of ram, then she decided she wanted internet access so I got a wireless router but trying to set up wireless on 98 proved so hit and miss that I reformatted the hard drive and put XP on it, it worked a treat for several years all be it a bit slowly.

[Salusa]

Windows 2000 Professional maybe? (if you can still get it).

[izod tester]

As Hasselhof has suggested, I would recommend putting a modern Linux distribution designed for older computers on it. AntiX Mepis is an alternative to Xubuntu.

I recently put AntiX Mepis on a 366 MHz Toshiba Laptop for my 84 year old mother-in-law. She is happy with the way it works and it hasn't given any problems so far.

[airborne_artist]

We've got a W98 PC in the playroom. Runs MS Office, Firefox 2.0, and I've had VoIP working fine on it too. It's connected by wireless USB adaptor to the BT DSL router. It needs more memory (has 128 I think) to allow it to run a bit faster, but it fires up much faster than my XP SP2 upstairs. Never had any problems with it.

My bargain of the week was a Sony Vaio running W2k Pro - £35.00 - popped in some more RAM and it flies.

[The late XV105]

Thanks for all the help and shared opinions.

After a lot of thought and a lot of consideration of all the presented options, including local advice not to try and upgrade the mobo for similar reasons to given here (it is indeed Dell specific) a summary of the situation is that my inlaws will choose from one of the following:

Current PC running W98 but without MSN Messenger and webcam (as half expected I have proven that neither will work properly) and with my spare external 160GB LaCie HDD for images backup. This is the cheapest option (no further cost at all bar the ADSL subscription that they will need anyway) but with reasonable chance of ten year old component failure as I have decided not to do any preventive upgrades or replacement; I don't have time before I start the drive home and can't run the risk of teething problems. The absence of chat and webcam that my inlaws and wife covet with 20 month old twins to share is also not to be underestimated; remember that there is well over a thousand miles between the respective parties and kids grow fast.
A brand new basic spec processor unit with or without screen, keyboard, mouse depending on cost, and SP2 o/s (any flavour, I don't care), depending on cost vs quality. Remember I have a spare licenced copy of XP Pro if I need to use it, as I do the peripherals mentioned from the old PC.
As above but second hand, warranted, and supplied by the local PC shopThey are currently leaning towards either of the latter two bullets, which makes me somewhat relieved as I am very au fait with XP and find SP2 to be extremely stable and with very low chance of failures especially given my inlaws restricted functionality usage.

I will therefore take a walk to the local, helpful, small town PC shop (I won't call it a store as it's physically tiny though crammed to the seams!) and see what they have on offer for either. To buy from them, even at a small price premium, also buys me a first port of call when my inlaws have (probably User) problems. Not to be taken lightly after previous protracted phone calls to explain the most simple PC operation basics when the tiniest deviation from my hand written notes had occurred, let along a fault.

It would have been easy to junk the old PC as a matter of course, but I always try and extend lifespan of old kit if I can; I love progress but dislike being forced to throw away the basics to get the advantages unless I really have to. Like with a previous post, my wife is still using my ancient Compaq Armada E500 laptop. Rebuilt once and upgraded at the same time by making one good one from two knackered ones (before kids, and when I had time for such pleasures), it still gives sterling service.

So, many thanks for all your help in thinking this through.
XV105