Is this old desktop PC powerful enough?

poppellerant

GreyQueen wrote: »

By gum, am I learning some stuff up here today. Head's going wibble-wibble as the technophobia tries to kick in. I'm resisting it as hard as I can. I like the sound of a wired network connection but how do I get it to the machine as I don't appear to have a network port?

The phone line is right beside the PC, with a extension so I can run the landline phone off it in another part of the flat. Phone cable goes into a surge-protector powerstrip then into the modem in the PC tower.

Struggling on, struggling on.......did I mention I can remember pre-decimal currency.............?:rotfl:

Right tackling the issue of the network card first.

Look at your PC from the back - there will be about 2 or 4 screens holding either a "shell" (the shell slides over the computer) or a side panel (which just slides off after unscrewing). From then on, you just find a spare white PCI port, remove the blanking plate for that port and slot the network card in - fairly simple.

If you get stuck, just take some photos and we can tell you which screws to touch and leave alone. After you're inside the computer, just take another photo and we can tell you what to remove, etc.

Regarding the location of the ADSL modem/router. It is always best to have the router plugged in at the master socket socket. You will get some ADSL filters, and you plug one of these directly into the master socket - then the extension and ADSL router plug into the filter. All the filter does is seperate the voice and modem signals to stop interference.

Without knowing your layout, it would be wise to buy a network cable long enough to hook up to the router. They are cheap as chips, just as network cards that you add in to your computer.

pineapple

Just to go off topic I use Avira and Firefox.
And sandboxie - simply brilliant for secure browsing!

patman99

I'd be surprised if there is no LAN port on the back. I haven't seen a PC built in the last 12 years without one.

I have a couple of spare cards. PM me and I will send you one for the cost of the postage.

Dave_C_2

spannerzone wrote: »

The above does assume the ISP supplies an ADSL modem router that has USB and ethernet ports which I suspect is no longer the case, most supplied will only have an ethernet port....not to say it's impossible but rather unlikely these days.

Oops! You are quite correct. My latest Router, BT home Hub 2, did not come with a USB cable to add to my collection.

Apologies for the misleading post.

Dave

spannerzone

Dave_C wrote: »

Oops! You are quite correct. My latest Router, BT home Hub 2, did not come with a USB cable to add to my collection.

Apologies for the misleading post.

Dave

Many modems used to have USB and ethernet so covered all options but that doesn't seem to be the case any more (which to be honest is much better as USB was never great for broadband compared to a network connection)

spannerzone

patman99 wrote: »

I'd be surprised if there is no LAN port on the back. I haven't seen a PC built in the last 12 years without one.

I have a couple of spare cards. PM me and I will send you one for the cost of the postage.

You're probably about right, I'd say the majority of PC's since about 2001 - 2002 came with a network connection but prior to that they were almost always a seperate card. I remember a popular Asus motherboard I bought in 2001 didn't have one fitted

GreyQueen

Dave_C wrote: »

I run a machine of similar age with a 1.2 GHz AMD Duron processor and it's fine with XP and Broadband.

When you sign up for broadband you normally get the following:

• A CD containing driver files for the usb connection and generally useless other stuff.
• A router and Power supply.
• Several ADSL filters - you need one in each phone socket.
• A lead to go to the router from the ADSL filter in the phone line
• Two leads to go from the router to your PC. One is USB and the other Ethernet (AKA network)

You can use either USB or ethernet to connect to the router from your PC
USB plugs in here
And Ethernet plugs in here


Ethernet is preferable as it requires no drivers and just works in windows XP.

USB requires some set-up from the installation CD - drivers are required. Purists will say that USB is generally slower than Ethernet, but compared to dial-up it will still be fast.


Finally if you post your PC make and model we may be able to help a little more. If you don't know this then you can find the motherboard make and model from XP:
Start > Run > DXdiag
and the list will show amongst othe things:

System manufacturer: (mine says ECS)
System Model: (mine says K7SOM+)


Hope this helps, Dave

Most bizarrely, my computer says "n/a" alongside System Manufacturer and System Model. It came from Evesham (deceased) in 2002 and has an Asus motherboard. This is know because the Asus screen is visible for a second during start-up.

SteveJH200

If you download and install this handy little tool then it will tell you the make and model of motherboard, how much memory you have and lots more.

http://www.filehippo.com/download_speccy/

robmar0se

Surely the OP will know, from the pictures posted on this post at least twice, whether they have an ethernet slot? It is fairly obvious. In case they need more info it is just like a bigger modem socket (which we know they have).

At the price of these things its hardly going to break the bank - even buy for as little as £1.79 on ebay................