WARNING: Working with vintage machines on a network or the internet requires the kind of common sense most lamestreamers do not have. I am in no way, but posting this page, condoning using these machines to do financial transactions or deal with connections that REQUIRE security to be safe to use. What I AM doing is showing how to connect these machines for the sole purposes of internet connectivity for leisure/entertainment/historical re-enactment, and to allow you to copy files over your network.

ALSO WARNING: Any Armchair Infosec Dweebs who want to fight me on this and send me scathing B.S. e-mails telling me I'm an idiot will lead to basically instant public humiliation on this website as I go on to explain how the world works for everyone beyond the guarded walls of your mother's basement, as well as me digging so deep into the reasons why you are wrong about your assumptions based on listening to your Favorite youtuber shill Nord VPN for the 1,295,359,592th time. Look, I work in I.T., I do handle the security side of networks, and you're a stupid fool who can't tell advertising from fact if you want to argue about putting vintage x86 PCs on the internet.

The other piece is the internet piece. While the internet has drastically changed since Web 2.0 with Web 3.0 on the horizon, much of it's baseline functionality has still remained the same. It's still just a worldwide WAN of various computers, hosting resources that can be accessed by "clients" - aka, your computer that's surfing the web or Telnetting into Bulletin Board Systems. And not all of these resources have been turned into some kind of commercial, pay-to-play, Web 2.0, touch-enabled, nightmare. Actually, a lot of us, myself included, want the web to be like it was in the olden days with Newsgroups, Search engines that actually searched for relevant information (instead of places to buy shit at), Bulletin Board Systems hosted by enthusiastic SysOps who enjoyed conversing with their visitors, playing door games, and hosting "philes" and files alike. The old "net" still exists - it's just buried under layers and layers of synthetic corporate bullshit, kind of like an early 80's pop/rock song trying to be "New Wave". There's a great "guitar tone" under there, but you can't hear it because of the label sanctioned guy with 9 keyboards and a vocoder!

This "underground" is what we are focusing on with regards to the internet and vintage PC's - not going to e-bay, Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, or YouTube - but Bulletin Boards, FTP Servers, Opendirectories, IRC Chat, and regular ole' HTTP and HTTPS Websites. Stuff hosted by computer people, for computer people!

The technology industry moves very fast, things change all the time, and the definition of "old" is different for people like us, and people like the lamestreamer consumertards who will listen to "steve" (Howdy dootings,mah name is Stee') tell them about "Nordstrom Internet Security Gift Cards". OLD for us is actually VINTAGE. There IS a difference.

So let's go briefly over the computer lifecycle and why nobody malicious gives a rats ass about your old 486.

When a computer is "cutting edge" or "brand new", it has the latest O/S on it, a CPU within the last 3 versions of the same (ie Core i5 or i7 to name a couple), RAM within spec for most modern applications, a hard disk with the current xfer rate or one just slightly behind, and Windows 10 or Windows 11 installed on it. These machines are the second most at risk because Microsoft Windows and PC's in general tend to have vulnerabilities, including sometimes "Zero Day Vulnerabilities" created by various Security Stack Updates and Feature Updates made to the operating system, and various optimizations made within the CPU that might leave open some holes a hacker can exploit - such as the Hyperthreading and out-of-order-Execution that was exploited in Core 2 Duo and older chips for the Spectre and Meltdown viruses (which affected anything 80586 - ie PENTIUM - or newer). If you wondered why your modern day PC manufacturer constantly has to issue UEFI Firmware and Operating System Updates from Microsoft - there's your fast and easy answer. But if you keep up with all that (like I do) and make sure your machine stays updated, gets rebooted regularly, and proper care, you have little to worry about.

Once it "ages out" it becomes it's most vulnerable - this is what I call the "OLD" Stage - that stage between 5 and 20 years old where it still may contain relevant information, security holes in the O/S are still being exploited - usually to drain your grandma's bank account or find her bank card logins to do so - but the machine is still functional enough to be usable. Now, this is the magic era where I take these machines - but that's why we say PUT LINUX ON THEM - because Linux will continue to be supported and updated for years to come during this era, while Microsoft will drop support of the latest Windows version that will run on your hardware, and then your machine is wide open to attacks from the latest Windows bugs. During this time, your machine DRASTICALLY loses value, you may have spent $500-1500 for a new computer in in 2015, but now it's worth about $25 or $50 at best. Nobody wants it. And it's during this time all these old machines are sent off to e-waste to be crushed, destroyed, or sent to Abobloshie to give the gold extractors there cancer.

After about 20 years though, the machine becomes what we call "Vintage". What does this mean for security - a lot. 20 years is about 4 lifetimes for a computer. If it's one of the lucky few that survives the onslaught of e-waste, viral video prop-work, living in someone's closet for years on end without being powered up, or living in a dusty corner somewhere else....several things happen. For starters, the operating system now is most likely so old it cannot communicate properly with any of it's previously long standing internet, and local resources. A fine example of this is Windows XP currently - you can't activate it using Microsoft's servers, some of it's security holes have long been patched out of current windows versions to a point It won't properly talk to various internet and network resources - so the connection is REFUSED by them. There's no cloud connectivity so that's a potential block. And SMB 1.0 no longer works either - so no more file sharing with your Windows 11 desktop.

But these outdated lacks of security protocols blocked by modern systems contributes to security in a very off-hand way. See, a insecure system is only at risk if it contains data or resources that a hacker might find purposeful to do something destructive. This brings up the purpose of MOTIVATIONS of a hacker.

The #1 motivation of a hacker, is the #1 motivation of us all - MONEY! Cash! GREEN! Currency! Bitcoin!. It begets everything else that goes with it (power, sex, glamor, interest, fame) - and there's not a lot of money in a disused 20 year old computer.

In the time that a person owned that machine, Their financial Cards have expired at least four times in 20 years, and each card would have a different number and security code. Passwords by now would have been caught by password management agents in modern software and forcibly changed to something entirely different. Many of the financial institutions of 20+ years ago are either gone, or merged into another company, so even if those credentials still worked, the websites would be long gone by now so nobody's bookmarks or shortcuts, or web history, would be useful. They may have moved house multiple times since then, so even a real-life hacking would be impossible, and the younger the owner was when they had that machine at the time, the more likely it is the level of abstraction of ANY addresses you might have on that machine, is so deep, you might as well call it quits because you're not finding out where they are now. They could have gotten married, changed their name, or even died (SOL). And the returns on such would be so tiny, useless, and worth nothing at this point, especially considering you're navigating a computer at least 100x less as fast, with a 1000x less as fast network connection, on a bloated WIndows operating system on a 20+ year old hard disk that's probably developing bad sectors (and could be therefore corrupting and rendering the data you seek useless anyway).

The above is why I'm so adverse towards people who claim "but they'll put a bitcoin miner on your DOS client" - because that's just FUD - Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Sure, you can make a Bitcoin miner for a C64, but the chances of someone wanting to use that on the internet when there are plenty of far mroe capable machines that don't require as much trickery to work to the point it might not even work anyway in a multi-user exploited setting - you have far more important security issues to worry about that are far more likely than someone hacking your mTCP Connected MS-DOS machine.

The TLDR and long and short of it is, nobody really gives a rats-ass about your Pre-Windows desktop or laptop computer. There's nothing of value, there's so many limitations to work around it makes it an undesireable target, and it's too old to be really useful in anything lucrative.

Now, that's not to say your OWN actions can't put you at risk - I put that in a whole other category. Like any other activity involving computers, there are rules, and these are mine for vintage machines regarding data, information, and personal security...

1. Do Not Do Anything Financial on Old Hardware - This should be pretty glaringly obvious, because most likely it will not work, and if it does, you probably just f***ed yourself, expect to be calling your financial institutions now for your stupdity.
2. Do Not Disable Security on a Modern System to allow Connectivity from a Legacy System - Things like SMB 1.0, encrypted passwords to third party SMB clients, firewalls disallowing legacy protocols and ports used as a common method of attack - DO NOT DISABLE THEM. If you need to connect a modern box to an old machine, there's good ways of doing this, such as FTP, or using a Virtual Host Sandbox to do it. In the rare case you DO choose to do something like enable SMB 1.0 or disable encryypted passwords - then make sure to change them back when done.
3. Only Have Networking Services Enabled on the Legacy Client when Needed - You'll notice all my DOS machines have about 4-7 entries in the boot menu - and at least one of those is for Networking. The reason why I do this is so that networking is ONLY enabled when it's needed. There's no point in having networking enabled on a legacy client when you don't need it - not just does it add a tincture of risk to your machine, but it also eats up and hogs many system resources better allocated to more fun things, like DOS games, or making pixel art.
4. The Above Goes Double for Microsoft Windows - Microsoft Windows, especially Windows 9x, is one of the most insecure operating systems from a networking standpoint you can use. And while it is not a target, it did have some pretty glaring security holes that a more seasoned malicious force could use against you. I NEVER leave my Windows 9x machines booted up and on the network 24/7/365 like I can my modern Linux box.
5. Don't Use the same Passwords, Logins, and Other details you'd use on your modern machines - These passwords, logins, and other things for networking need to be different in case the system is compromised and a hacker gets the credentials. Windows For Workgroups stores your login in PLAIN TEXT in a text file, and almost all versions of Windows non NT will let you into the system without a login. The problem is, in a very rare case, a hacker MIGHT assume that the same login works for your regular daily system, and if it turns out they're right, lookout because you're going to have a big mess to clean up.

Most people first dealt with a network in the early 1990's - called the INTERNET - you might have heard of it ;). And back then, it was way different. You instead got access through a LOCAL ISP - who charged you like $15/hr. to dial into their server known as a "node" to connect to the worldwide network using a modem and your phone line. They had what were called "Local area access numbers" and you'd pick one closest to you, dial that number on the computer using a Dialer program, and then it would connect you to the internet - where then you could open up a web browser, send/recieve e-mail, chat in chat rooms, read news in newsgroups, and basically, precursors to all the same stuff we do now. Of course, this tied up the phone line so nobody could call you - this was before we had phones in our pockets - phones were instead wired into the same wall jack your computer used to access the internet. So it was one or the other - unless you were *rich* enough to have TWO phone lines in your house. Nobody had Cell Phones or WiFi back then. If you wanted to VPN in for work - you instead most likely telnetted into a mainframe using a terminal program and a modem from the motel - which would (and often still does) have an RJ11 phone jack. Welcome to the 1990's kiddos - we also had to use "hotkeys" in lieu of a mouse often, carry 2 or more batteries with us with our laptops because of the paltry 1-2 hour runtimes, and our modems came in the form of little PCMCIA cards that often had a dongle that got lost and cost a fortune to replace. Only the nerdliest of nerds had ETHERNET in their house, and even then, you STILL had to tie up the phone line to dial into the internet! Unless you were a millionaire/billionaire who was willing to have an entire server closet of equipment put in your home to make your own node to the internet, and a T1 connection.

Why it's important to know this is that the older your vintage machine is, the less likely it is to have an ethernet card in it. Most computers Pre-2000 required a SEPARATE Ethernet adapter to be connected to a network. And this was not just a standard feature or regular option on most in-home desktops and laptops either, it had to be added via some form of expansion card (ISA, PCI, PCMCIA, or CardBus usually), or if you luckily had it on the motherboard in a very rare case, you needed special drivers almost nobody installed on the computer anyway. As the 00's went on, and broadband became more popular, more OEMs started providing ethernet connectivity on their computers from the factory floor to the point it was built into the motherboard and fully supported.

So that's the first thing to look for is some form of ethernet card on the vintage machine you want to connect. This is your best bet. Be weary that there may be a network card already in the machine - one with BNC (thinnet), or AUI (thicknet) ports, or even the old IBM Token Ring cards found in a lot of ex-government/business PS/2 machines, but that's not what you will want, you will want to replace that card with an ethernet adapter of some kind.

The next thing to consider is how your ISP set you up with hardware. Most people used to ISPs and hardware will probaly be fine, but a lot of people just getting started might not realize they can only attach ONE wired device to their network for internet access, especially if you have not upgraded your "modem" - properly referred to as a GATEWAY in a million years.

Modem vs. Gateway - A Modem is called such because it "Modulates" a digital signal into an analog one (ie digital = 1011101010001010, analog = ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~). This is how your old school POTS landline modem from 1999 worked. Your computer would send the digital form of the phone number to the modem, the modem would change it into the dial-tones that dialed the ISP by MODULATING them from the digital pulses sent from the PC's serial port, and then the phone would dial up another modem over the phone line, which then would send requests and responses back and fourth in the stereotypical noises we all remember from modems in the 1990's (eeeonk eeonk.....spurrrrrp....speeeeeeedwweeeeeeeee...eonk eonk.....blip.....eonk..whissshhhhhhhhhhh) - that was the sound of your computer and the other computer talking in ANALOG. THen the signal was recieved on either end and then DEMODULATED into digital binary - ie 101001010010010 - by the modem over the PC's serial port to communicate. SO there you go, the craziest explaination of what an ACTUAL MODEM is. Hopefully this explains it well enough.

A GATEWAY however, is nothing like a modem. ISPs started CALLING them "Cable Modems" because they did originally use the analog cable lines in the 2000's, but these days, it's all 100% DIGITAL. Therefore no modulation/demodulation takes place. Instead, it just converts from one digital format to another digital format understood by the ISP/internet/etc. That's all it does.

And your Gateway today may also be combined with other internet/network/cable related services and other network device functions as well such as (but not limited to): Router, Firewall, Wireless Access Point, Internet Security Device, Secure Web Facing Management Portal, Network ATtached Storage (NAS), Media Player, Set Top Box (STB)....and the list goes on and on. It may also just simply be a gateway, and require additional hardware to connect.

The most basic connection method is the PC->Gateway->ISP connection. This is how my Verizon/Frontier's 768K DSL and Comcast Cable internet was in Seattle. Basically,. Cumcrap or Fartiers would send you a basic DSL modem (an actual modem), or a Cable Modem (also could have been a digital gateway), and you would have ONE ethernet port on it, tied to your MAC ADDRESS. If you wanted multiple computers on the same internet connection, you went to Staples, Worst Buy, or Office Despot and bought a "Router".

A basic Router has multiple ports on it - and what it does, is it ROUTS network traffic - in this case, to the Internet. The way it worked with Cumcrap and Shitrizin is you plugged in the router, spoofed the MAC Address of your primary PC that the setup guy or "EZ Setup" CD setup your connection with (the one on your account statement basically), and then plugged all your machines into the router and enjoyed internet across multiple machines.

And after a few years, it was not uncommon to find your firewall, router, and Wireless Access Point all served in the SAME device. My first Router had a firewall but no WAP (those of you that want to joke like Cardi.B....f*** off). So I had to buy a separate AP, and connect it to my router on one of it's ports.

But what if you wanted to connect more than 3-5 machines in? Well, then you need to get your hands on a SWITCH. A Switch is a active network device that like an "intelligent hub" that has some minor routing capabilities. So you grab a 4-8 port Linksys or Netgear switch, and slap that puppy on there, and wire in all your other PC's to it using Ethernet cable.

One thing to keep in mind is you can also buy switches at Thrift Shops, and on E-bay, but you need to keep in mind the SPEED of the switch. You do not want a switch slower than the fastest machine on your network, particularly the segment using the switch. Say you have a Gigabit Core i5 on your network like I do, then you will want a GIGABIT switch (1gbps). Back in the pre-2005 days it was a 10/100 switch I wanted because 100mbps was the fastest machine in the house (Pentium III with a Intel Desktop Board with a 10/100 card built in). But if you're plugging in a block of ISA only machines like I am - then a 10mbps hub might suffice (I have one in storage).

Which brings me back to network cards......the expansion slots in your vintage PC determines the fastest ethernet adapter you can get for it....

And keep in mind just because you have a fast network card in your computer, it does not mean it's going to be going full tilt the whole time. Several factors can impact network speed beyond the scope of this (getting your old PC connected).

Another method of connecting an old PC to a modern network/internet connection, especially if you hate the idea of a lot of wires everywhere, is to use a WiFi to Ethernet Adapter - aka a Wireless Bridge. These can be purchased online for around $25-50 and will allow you to plug in a device that only has ethernet capabilities to allow it to connect to a modern wireless network. I just recently started doing this.

To set this up, you need to first connect it to a modern computer without a network connection attached, and possibly reset to defaults if you bought used, then follow the instructions to access the on-device configuration utility to connect the Wireless Bridge to your pre-existing WPA/WPA2 WiFi network - which most likely, if you have a newer Gateway, is already included in the device. To do this, you just find the SSID (WiFi network name) in the list, put in the password to it, and viola, the device is setup.

Once the device is setup, you plug it into your vintage PC's ethernet card via an ethernet cable, and it basically just acts as a wireless ethernet cable for your old PC for the most part (aside from it having it's own IP Address). This is a simple, elegant solution. And the nice part, you don't need more than one on your network with multiple vintage PC's, it's also possible to put a switch with it, and then attach multiple PCs to the same WiFi to Ethernet Adapter allowing for a remote, entirely wireless, retro-gaming room.

A final resort is one I used for old laptop computers - using data-plan or WiFi tethering on your cellular device(s). On my cell phones I've had in the past, I was able to connect my vintage 486 laptops to the internet, and sometimes the LAN in my house, using the "tethering" feature. What this does, is turns your cell phone into a WiFi Repeater, or more often than not (as with my LG Stylo 6), a internet Gateway. This will allow you to use non WPA compliant WiFi adapters - especially those old PCMCIA Type-II 16-bit 802.11b WiFi Cards (11mbps) I use on my 486 laptops - to the internet. Granted, there's no security on this, so I would not make this a "full time" solution - as you have to omit the wifi password entirely, and if you can (like I do) limit the cell phone to only allow ONE client connected at a time.

DOS - For DOS, you need to install a separate network client software to work, as well as drivers for your network card. You have generally 2 choices of network client that are popular: Microsoft LAN MAnager/Network Client 3.0, and Mike Brutman's mTCP Client.

Microsoft Network Client/LAN Manager 3.0 - This is a very old software suite from Microsoft that you had to buy seperatley. It supports all major networking protocols of the time including IPX/SPX, NetBEUI, and TCP/IP, with and without DHCP. It utilizes the same NDIS (Network Driver Interface Specification) drivers you'd use say if you were using Microsoft Windows. This was also used in CONJUNCTION with Pre-Windows 3.1 windows for networking as well (as Windows was just a GUI Shell on TOP OF DOS at the time). AS such it's more oriented to file and printer sharing than connecting to the internet, and actually, it really stinks to TRY and put anything on the internet using this, as you'd need a Winsock and a bunch of other jazz for it to even work, if it even can.

Mike Brutman's mTCP Suite - Mike Brutman created this modernized TCP/IP based software suite for DOS that fits in a tiny footprint and runs on something as slow and old as an IBM PC or PC Jr. While it has no file-sharing capabilities on a modern or even vintage level, it DOES have ways around that, making it not a problem at all. It comes with an FTP Client (FTP), FTP Server (FTPSRV), DHCP Client (DHCP), IRC Client (IRCJR), Telnet Client (TELNET), Web Content Grabber (HTGET), and a Time Server Sync Client (SNTP) - just to name most of them. It requires a PACKET DRIVER to work for your ethernet card, and that's it, default interrupt vector being 0x60. This is also the default client provided with FreeDOS.

Windows For Workgroups 3.1x - Windows For Workgroups was a short lived line of Network-centric versions of Windows 3.1 and Windows 3.11 respectively. At first glance, they look exactly like Windows 3.1x right down to the Program Manager shell, Program Groups, Program Items. But what it is really is Windows 3.1x with a version of Microsoft's LAN Manager or Network Client 3.0 embedded into it with some Shell extentions for sharing files, folders, and printers and connecting to them over a regular network. All the same files and commands apply in DOS with this that they do with MSLANMAN and MSNETCLIENT. It uses SMB 1.0 for file sharing and printer sharing, therefore it cannot talk with a modern PC, and it sends passwords in plaintext so you can see why security would be an issue with it if you don't use common sense. The changes become noticeable in that they added a "Network" program group where you can configure your NIC and networking protocols, and what network ecosystem you are using, as well as a custom File Manager designed to allow for file sharing and accessing network resources (including mapping shares at boot time like modern windows). Out of the Box you get NetBEUI and IPX/SPX network protocol support, but to have proper TCP/IP network support with DHCP, you have to install a package/protocol called "TCPIP32B", which Microsoft would provide on their BBS back in the 90's. And DHCP has to be enabled via a checkbox once TCPIP32B is installed. It also uses NDIS drivers just like MSLANMAN does, which you also have to provide yourself.

Windows 9x - In 1995 Windows 95 came out, and changed the world of operating systems on personal computers forever. Compared to Windows for Workgroups above, one drastic change was that Network Support was - at some point - pre-implimented into Windows 95, as a rolled in feature, rather than some kind of esoteric external add-on you had to pay extra for. Windows 95 now included drivers for the most popular network cards of the time, and coult auto-detect them, even if they were not plug and play (and could somewhat use PnP to configure the other devices in the computer around it), as well as it defaulted to using TCP/IP as the default protocol instead of IPX/SPX or NetBeui because of the widespread growth of the internet, and the internet's reliance on TCP/IP as a network protocol. However, just like Windows For Workgroups, passwords were stored in plaintext, security was just a suggestion - you could sTILL bypass the Windows Login Prompt by pressing the "ESC" key, and in general, it was not very secure, actually, I find it to be a bit LESS Secure than Windows For Workgroups 3.11 is! Because WFW311's persnickety and exacting configuration parameters make it a little harder to get going properly than Win9x does.

Windows NT (including 2000 and XP) - In 1996, Microsoft introduced their part of the failed IBM collaboration known as OS/2, and rebranded it as "Microsoft Windows NT". Windows NT - for "New Technology" - was a whole new kernel, fully 32-bit (win32), and aimed at enterprise environments, hence why nobody knew or heard much of it until 2001 when Microsoft re-branded Windows NT as Windows XP, and offered it in multiple versions. It adds higher level security, domain connectivity, group policy settings, user rights and privledges, and other ways to manage and maintain access on the machine safely for everyone in a corporate networked environment. NT is still alive and well in Windows 11 to this day, but it came out at the time when the Pentium and late 486 were king of the hill. That said, older versions (7 and older) have SMB 1.0 enabled, which is now considered a security risk. But at the latest, Windows 2000 Professional introduced encrypted passwords, so that's a plus. That said, outside nostalgia for an old win32 workstation, or as a lighter weight gaming platform, I don't see much use for Windows NT for legacy users unless they want to be reliving their work-days of the mid-late 1990's and after.