In Deseperate Need of Help - Dealing with networking and win98

Hi.
I'm not sure where to begin with my problem, but I'll give it a try. I am currently using an old Compaq (I know, forgive me, its a handme down) running Windows 98. It has been sharing the dsl internet with 4 other computers on 2 routers for about 8 months now. For some reason, all of a sudden, it quit accessing the internet through it's lan. I have messed with every setting, used different lan cables, and tried known working connections that the other systems use. The network never was set up as a big deal, we all just plugged in, and its worked just fine... until now. I even went out and bought a physical ethernet card, since the one i was using was a just an RJ-45 jack running off the motherboard. It seems I can not even install the card because apparently I don't have an PCI bus slots that are masters. It won't detect it, even though the lights work and such. I've been messing with this for a month now and I'm completely at my wit's end. Anyone that could help would be a great comfort right now. Thanks.

You would need to disable the onboard nic in the bios so you have the resources available for the new nic. I would also disable any com ports not used to free up additional resources.

Before you started messing with all the settings did you check to see if you were getting a ip address from the router? Ipconfig would have shown you your address. Could you ping the gateway address? This would have tested the nic and cable.

Not sure where you are at so can't advise further.

all good point from wanderer2, also if you type winipcfg do you get and error like cannot access IP information?