Setting up a network for my church

[pr8thr]

My church currently has four PCs running Windows 98: (I know OLD stuff) smile!!!
486/66 MHz processor, 200 MB hard drive, 16 MB RAM
Pentium/233 MHz processor, 500 MB hard drive, 32 MB RAM
Pentium 233 MHz processor, 2.5 GB hard drive, 64 MB RAM
Pentium II 533 MHz processor, 16 GB hard drive, 128 MB RAM

They are not very concerned about security at this time. The church does not have a lot of money to spend on this. I want to present a simple, inexpensive solution for my church. What type of network would you recommend and why? What role would you assign to each of the four workstations and what other equipment would you recommend? What type of upgrades might be needed?

 

[dyserq]

To be honest, i doubt that you will even be able to find a network router to even be able to be configured to your system specs, they are, to be honest, just too old
I think that you need to upgrade the computers first ... i would normally recommend a LAN, not wireless connection ...
All you need is the network card, etc, not much, most home users will be able to set it up quite easy ... especially with all the wizards included on Windows XP ...
You might be able to find more help if you put it in the General Software and Hardware section too

 

[x0r515t]

A router doesn't care about your systems specs, you can set up a small LAN on old PC's just fine. All you need to do is be sure that all the machines have ethernet capabilities, and if they don't, you'll have to install an ethernet card in the machines. If the PC's are all running win98, driver support will not be a problem.

 

[adamorris]

You should be able to set up a simple peer to peer network. No server necessary. Just set up each computer for file sharing and share the HD's so they can access files on everyones drives. Get a simple 5 port HUB, remember you generally cannot use the 1st port on it. Set up the hub to the internet and then connect all the computers to the hub. You will have to configure each computer with the right protocols and such but is fairly easy and cheap.

Some steps by Microsoft for win98:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q250927

I can't believe they are still using a 486 computer. You can buy better computers out there for less than a hundred bucks. They might want to upgrade those two oldest computers. If they dont they might run into problems later on. Just some extra info though.

 

[Luiz396]

I entered here to help, but u guys... left me with nothing to say!

 

[Interlaced]

Yea i also agree with adamorris a simple p2p network with just basic file sharing.

 

[Rugmuncher]

Put network cards in the old buggers, and link them all with a switch ad ethernet cable ( cat 5e )

Then, use windows file sharing. peer to peer instead of having a central server as interlaced said above.