I spent a lot of time (one hour at a time of course, per day) at the various libraries near where I used to live, back when I had connection issues (iow, I was flat broke and ripped through my allocation on those free ad-supported dialup services that were around in the 1990s). Sucked, but of course, I was getting more exercise then, so...
Maybe Linux on an inexpensive (under $100) replacement board for your existing CPU box (or use the existing hard drive, if that’s still working, and the OS on there) would be an option?
Linux on a $10 USB stick.