Networking Win98 To Win11?

Hi! I have a Win11/64 laptop at home and a Win98SE mini-tower at my mother's house and may soon get a Win98SE mini-tower for home. I also have an URL for information on a USB network configuration (Connecting Two PCs Using a USB-USB Cable - Hardware Secrets). Now, I want to temporarily network the laptop to these computers. I've been using a flash drive to transfer the files up to this point. I have two questions: Is the networking worth it? Will it work here?

 

Ehternet or USB network?

 

USB.

 

Those USB cables are still around and they do work, but going back to older hardware - depending on the USB version, they might be very slow. USB 1.0 2-12 Mbps, old ethernet cards generally can do 10Mbps. Dealing with very old hardware also means finding drivers that work.

 

So far, I've been using flash drives to transfer software between the computers, but I really want a network so that I can share compressed information--DriveSpace floppies and zip disks on the Win98 computer and WinMount drives on the Win11 laptop--and the contents of the hard drives. Where can I find the cables and drivers--for both Win98 and Win11?

 

I think the issue is finding one that supports Win98, most USB transfer cables on the market today have support for modern OSes. The best way is to use ethernet, I'm sure you can find NICs for win 98 since they were much more common than USB transfer cables.

 

I found it at Installing and Configuring A Windows 98 Network (freeservers.com) but don't want to install a device on the computer. The Win11 computer, AFAIK, has a NIC device, but I don't know about the Win98 computer. Also, I need the device on the Win11 laptop I bring to my mother's house for internet. Now, I just looked at How to manage network adapter settings on Windows 11 | Windows Central. It has the Win11 information. I probably don't need any more information for now. Thank you, guys!

 

Yesterday and this morning, I tried Google but didn't get the information I wanted: my laptop's ethernet is broken, so I can't use it. Last weekend, at my mother's house, somebody gave me a dongle, and it seems to have an ethernet connection. I'm looking for a USB to USB connection, and the Win98 computer seems to have USB 2.0. Where can I find the hardware and instructions for the install?