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This step-by-step guide will show you how to get a Windows 95/98/Me computer connected to Ethernet and the Internet using just a serial port and Virtual Modem software running on your Raspberry Pi host system or other system of choice. If you have not already, please follow the instructions how to set up Virtual Modem as it is a prerequisite for this tutorial. Make sure the serial cable is connected to the Raspberry and the vmodem.sh script is running on it before attempting this part of the guide. You can manually run vmodem.sh to see what is happening on the console of the Raspberry Pi if you need to troubleshoot.
You can connect to the Internet with the built-in dial-up functionality of Windows 95/98/Me, no network card needed. We will go through the steps how to set up a modem and then a dial-up connection on your Windows 95 (or later) computer. For the sake of completeness, we will then test the connection using Netscape Communicator 4.0, but you're free to use any web browser.
Once again, please make sure you have VModem set up and running and a serial cable is connected between the Raspberry Pi and your Windows 9x computer before attempting the following steps.
I am currently in the process of writing this guide. At it's current state the tutorial is in PRE-ALPHA. This message will be updated as I continue to work on this tutorial series.
For you to connect to VModem running on your Raspberry Pi, you must first tell Windows 95 that you have a modem that you can use, and it is connected to your serial port on your computer and it is a Standard Modem. Once you've set up the modem, you can set up the dial-up connection.
Almost there! What we need to do next is tell Windows that there is a phone number you want to dial, and the modem you want to use is Raspberry Pi Virtual Modem. Go ahead and open up Dial-Up Networking from the Start menu:
Congratulations! Now the only step left is to connect.
You should now be able to access the Internet. However, not many websites will work with old web browsers. If you'd like to access archived websites, you can set up a proxy server that can serve archived websites. The Wayback proxy server (wayback.steptail.com:8080) is straightforward to set up in many web browsers, and will allow you to access websites circa 1996-1998.
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