On Thu, 28 May 2015 10:16:07 +0100, News wrote:

What I can't see is the phone from the Netbook. Should I be able to?

Yes, it should just pop up as an external drive - providing you tell the
phone to act as external storage. When you plug the USB in, does it come
up on the screen asking what to do? Charge, storage, both?

I perhaps naively assumed the phone would appear on the Netbook (W98)

That's probably your problem, right there. An OS that was released 17yrs
ago and replaced 20yrs ago...