Win 98 and USB v2.0

You are going to have to buy the upgrade version which is a little cheaper than the full version. You can buy this at best buy.

Your new computer with usb2 should be able to connect to usb1 on your old computer. Or you could use a cross over cable if your computers have nics. Remove the hard drive from the old computer and slave it to the new computer and move data. If able to connect to internet/network on old computer then email the data to yourself or find a place you can upload data to and then go to new computer and download the data. I believe Laplink also lets you connect 2 computers using the parallel port and maybe even the serial port and I don't think it is very expensive. I hope this is useful info for you.

Use the Transfer Files and Settings Wizard in the XP Control Panel on your new computer to guide you thru cabling and transferring your files from your win98 box. It sounds to me like you do not have usb support at all on your win98 box, because if you did you are home free. usb 2 is not necessary for this. usb2 is needed for high throughput speed like for usb scanner or hard drive. not for File Transfering. Check Device Manager to see if you have a usb controller in the win98 box now and check out how to get drivers and trouble shoot usb in win98 (any version) at support.microsoft.com
It is possible to get usb support working on the win98 box without adding in a usb card (if the win98 box mobo supports it) but it can be a big hassle and if you are ditching the box after the file transfer it may not be worth the trouble.
You can use a serial or parallel file transfer cable, as mentioned, with the File and Settings Transfer Wizard. or by putting in a nic in the win98 box and getting an ethernet crossover cable

You may or may not "need" the SE edition of W98 for USB 2.0.

If you "need" USB 2.0 for your data transfer setup, the first thing you need to do, is to install a USB 2.0 PCI card in your old PC.

IF the driver for the USB 2.0 card requires W98 SE, it should tell you so when you begin the installation.

If you do need W98 SE, search ebay and old software sites for the W98 to W98 SE upgrade CD. There was a limited number of these produced, but they should be cheaper than getting the full retail W98 SE upgrade package.

Still, most USB data transfer cables (you are using a data transfer cable) are backward compatible and should work when connected to a USB 1 port. The data transfer rate will just be slower.

If you need high speed data transfer between your old and new computers, why not install a 10/100 network card in each and use a CAT5 cross-over cable?

Chas

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