Old desktop computer my sister-in-law gave my son - can't detect mouse

My sister-in-law gave my son an old desktop PC she had. It's Windows 98. It's really old, but it will be ok for him I think. (he's 9)
The problem is...it's doesn't have the typical mouse connection whatever it's called that just slips in usually next to the keyboard port thingy. It has the little screw in things. Parallel port or whatever it's called. Well, that port is loose like it moves to the inside of the computer.

Well, when I first hooked the computer up, it worked fine. Then, I was trying to tighten it up and it no longer even recognizes that it has a mouse.

I was just gonna get him a USB wireless mouse, but noticed that the computer doesn't even have any USB ports either.

Is there any way to upgrade the computer to a regular wired mouse? Also, is there any way to upgrade it to have USB ports because if I can fix the mouse issue, I was gonna get one of the Wi-Fi network adapter things that plug into the USB so that it will be capable of wireless internet. Otherwise, it have to be wired directly to the DSL modem.

I'm thinking it's not even worth trying to do, but if there's any possible way to upgrade it for my son, I will. On his Christmas list to Santa he even put "money to fix computer"...LOL

Hi
LadySmith....

Its great to see your son is interested in computers and it was a nice gesture by your sister-in-law to help in getting his digital education started.

Lets see if we can help out with your issues!

The downside with having an 'older' system these days is the lack of Software and Hardware support available.

You can sometimes add the availability of USB connections to systems that dont offer an outlet if the old motherboard supports this feature, however there are limitations:

(1) You cannot use an adapter to connect USB devices to your computer through your serial or parallel ports, nor any other ports.

You can only add USB support to a computer through PCI slots (For Desktops) or usb connector pins on the motherboard itself for which you will need the motherboard manual to refer to.

For Windows adaption using PCI, You will need a Pentium computer with PCI slots or a Pentium laptop that takes PCcard adapters. There are some 486 PC's with PCI slots, but often they have an early revision of the PCI spec, and generally won't work.
You'll also need a USB card.

In short, its probably not worth the effort and expenditure required and we would be best of trying to repair the old connection.

Its also not recommended to expose the older 'operating systems' such as 98 / 2000 etc to the Internet these days for they no longer receive Microsoft updates and are extremely vulnerable to unauthorized remote access and Malware infections, nor will much of the new updated security software available today, run on them.

Im guessing that you have been using one of these ports originally, for the mouse connection?



Let me know which one, and how did you attempt to tighten it?


Regards

The mouse connection looks like the bottom one, the serial port one. I didn't really know how to tighten it. Like from the back of the machine, you can just take your finger and push it into the machine. Then, to get it back out to plug up the mouse, you have to open the machine and I can't really find a way to tighten it. I mean, I fooled with it a little bit after it wasn't detecting the mouse, to try, but it just wasn't working. I'm wondering if it's connected to the motherboard and also came loose from there or something.

And yeah, I figured that it wouldn't be worth fixing as far as internet and all goes, but for now if I could just get the mouse to work, it would be good for him to play on some of the computer programs he likes to use (and are Windows 98 compatible) such as a Spongebob game and KidPix. Oh, and also he likes to draw on the MS Paint as well.

LadySmith wrote:

I'm wondering if it's connected to the motherboard and also came loose from there or something.

That's what i was afraid of......you will need to open the box up and check closely that its still correctly connected to the motherboard.

If its not, its probably a soldering iron job to reconnect it!

LadySmith wrote:

And yeah, I figured that it wouldn't be worth fixing as far as internet and all goes, but for now if I could just get the mouse to work, it would be good for him to play on some of the computer programs he likes to use (and are Windows 98 compatible) such as a Spongebob game and KidPix. Oh, and also he likes to draw on the MS Paint as well.

The older systems are great for the kids to learn and develop their gaming skills on!

Looking on the bright side, if worse comes to worse and the mouse connection is beyond an easy repair, you can pick up a much later Pentium 3 system (tower only) with win2000 or even xp on it for around $50 or cheaper these days.
Have a bit of a look around on ebay.....they are really cheap and great fun for the kids!

Keep the old monitor and all you should need is a PS2 keyboard & mouse!

With a system running xp, you could purchase a wireless router and run all the computers in your household on a LAN sharing the one internet connection!



Regards