Oh drat. My VMC lite is not compatible with Win 98.
I can still use the PC for a courtesy service - I remember now that I did run Win 98 with avast in a courtesy computer a while ago. For a few different people. And I recall them being satisfied about the setup. I think a couple of them were on dial-up. Anyway, what I might do is find a student with a hookup through hostel or home network to run a PC for me - they will have to stay with 98, have to run avast, won't have to pay for PC or for maintenance, or for tuition. I think good compromise. For now, I am left with 3.5GB out of 4GB capacity. Not bad. I will probably look to a 10 or 20GB HDD for this computer. Enough for small Office 2000 suite, and storage for data and picture files (schoolwork) .
Let us know if it works for you,
I noticed that install was not totally straight-forward, and will do final tasks in next few days when I tidy up the files and folders. A few drivers missed so I have bits and pieces here and there. I set time aside this week and will report back here. Still to load avast. But I am quite impressed with the outcome. I haven't loaded 98 for a while. Right now, however, I had better get onto a few other things, before I get sidetracked.
Thanks for help Mike and nightshade.