USB to Ethernet for Virgin?

Revenant

Revenant

Revenant

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Joined
11 Jan 2007
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113
Location
Southend-on-Sea
Hi

A friend of mine has recently had the Virgin TV/Phone/Broadband installed after using BT Broadband via his phone-line for the last few months.

His PC is probably3/4 years old and appears to have no network capabilities other than an internal 56K dial-up modem.

So... after now having Virgin Broadband installed I found that he's unable to connect via the supplied Ethernet cable from the router to the PC.

What are our options?

Thanks!
Simon
 
Thanks gents. I'll probably get the PCI Ethernet card for him then and fit that.

My only reservation is whether it will physically plug into his mobo - am I worrying about nothing?

I think the PC is an HP Pavilion.
 
pci been around for a while now (i think since something like 1992-94), im sure it will have pci support of the mobo, but i couldnt tell if there is a free pci slot.

best thing to do is to go round to mates open up the pc and see what you got to work with.
 
Am I missing something? Doesn't the Virgin BB cable modem have a USB port on the back? The engineer should have left you with a USB cable... :confused:
 
mynsa said:
pci been around for a while now (i think since something like 1992-94), im sure it will have pci support of the mobo, but i couldnt tell if there is a free pci slot.

best thing to do is to go round to mates open up the pc and see what you got to work with.
Click to expand...

He could remove the (im guessing PCI) internal 56k modem, so that leaves a slot free?
 
tim80bwi said:
Am I missing something? Doesn't the Virgin BB cable modem have a USB port on the back? The engineer should have left you with a USB cable... :confused:
Click to expand...

my cable modem doesn't have any usb ports - could be a different model to the one that to OP is using though.
 
tim80bwi said:
Am I missing something? Doesn't the Virgin BB cable modem have a USB port on the back? The engineer should have left you with a USB cable... :confused:
Click to expand...

The new models don't - as it's
Problematic
Not supported by new OS's
Can't cope with anything but the lowest speeds well (IIRC the usb connections on the modems are USB1)


I think someone at Virgin listened to the problems the engineers, tech support and so on were having with the USB option and decided to dump it on new/future models ;)

USB for modems is/was only a semi good idea back when most existing and new machines didn't have proper networking already, and even then only as it saved opening the machines up.


Personally I would definitely go with a PCI card, they are cheaper than the USB adaptors, much less hassle to deal with, and generally less likely to cause a problem.
 
Ok, I'd not thought of removing the existing 56k modem if need be. I'll definitely go with the PCI Network card now.

FYI the Virgin modem/router definitely doesn't have a USB socket. I thought about that when I realised his PC didn't have an Ethernet socket as I could use the cable from the old BT set-up.

Thanks for everyone's help.
 
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