Series of small problems = DEATH

[D-Lew]

Lol, descriptive title I know.
Here's the deal, I'm trying to get a 100% isolated (I'll explain that in a second) computer to be functional. Problem is, lots of problems... I'll make a list.

1: Disc drive listed in BIOS does not appear in "My Computer"
2: Floppy drive is listed, but does not function. (It "is not ready"??? Never heard that one before)
3: USB ports are not installed and won't install without Windows 98 disc.
4: Network card cannot be installed either.
5: Do not have Windows 98 SE disc I need to install any of the drivers. Even if I did, I couldn't use it since the drive is not functioning.

It's already got Windows 98 SE running pretty good on the machine, but as you can see, there's no way to transfer files right now. If I could fix just one of these things, I believe I could get the rest of them working acceptable for what the machine will be used for. But you see, THAT is the problem itself. I can't fix one of them. Every idea I come up with does not work because it involves some media in the transfer. Any ideas?

 

[esa193]

how old is this comp
haha

 

[D-Lew]

Not sure, it's P4 1.3GHz and Geforce 2 era.
I think I need to fix it with my foot.

 

[stuckinthecave]

move the drive to another comp. I'm not sure if you have another comp, or ur just using a public one, but THIS is a generic usb driver, i'm not sure if it'll work. If you don't have another comp, then probably the best thing you can do is buy a new NIC, hopefully with new drivers, and that'll get you started. Good luck, you've got a long road ahead.

*Edit*

Also, does the device manager list a cd drive? And make sure that the cd drive is listed as the slave in your bios, i've seen 98 sh*t itself if there are 2 masters.

 

[D-Lew]

Yeah it might not be a bad idea to move the hard drive and put all the files I need on there. I actually didn't think of that, nice idea.

+rep.

Edit:
OK, so... I installed a few of the things I needed including a chipset drivet. But THAT one...
Well, when the computer rebooted to finalize the installation, it locked up during one operation and BSODs... Now I can't get into it.
What now? Linux? I don't have a CD I can use for Windows 98...

 

[Raffaz]

Windows 2000 should run ok on there, i don't know for definite as you haven't gave the full specs tho. It still has extended support by MS until 2010 as well.

98 is outdated now and its not supported either, and you have found out the hard way that it doesn't support modern storage devices.

You could always use linux like you mentioned above, so something like kubuntu would work well. http://www.kubuntu.org/index.php

 

[freestyler105]

Lol, XP will run fine on a 1.4 GHz P4 assuming you have enough RAM. I originally had it on a 1.1 GHz Celeron I even did some pretty decent gaming on it.

 

[D-Lew]

Hah, it's not modern Raffaz, the whole thing is pretty dated. That hard drive is a 4GB AT model.

 

[Raffaz]

2000 will run fine tho. How much RAM is in there?

 

[D-Lew]

256 in Samsung memory. They actually have heat spreaders.