Connecting 2 Desktops

[trader11292001]

Hi There, Im new to this networking stuff, I wanted to create a home network with 2 PCs 1-WinXP P4 and 1-W98 Pentium1 - however I really do not know how and where to start. Could you please assist me and send your responses to santmr55@patan.org as I do not really frequent the forum. Thanks in advance.

[John Prophet]

Do you have a router or a hub? are both machines already on the internet?

[VHockey86]

what equipment you will needs depends on what you want to do... and frankly theres a variety of different techniques

I assume you have broadband rather than dialup? If you do, the best bet is to just buy a router. These are pretty easy to come by. About 40-50 dollars will get you a nice one.

Just connect the broadband to this, then the two pcs via cat5e cable to the router. As far as filesharing is concerned... enable file and print sharing on both machines via the control panel.

The windows XP network wizard generally works fairly well for easy setups. Just run this on the first PC, then it will allow you to make a "network setup disk". Put that into the windows 98 and repeat...

Thats a really basic overview, if you have any more questions or it isnt what you wanted to do just let us know

If you have dialup, then you could simply connect the two PCs with what is called a Crossover cable (it allows connections directly from one Network Card to another - NIC). Then, on the "main" pc all you do is enable ICS (internet connection sharing). This is done in the properties of the connection in the control panel / my network places
The drawback? The "main" pc has to be turned on in order to use internet on the other.

The same crossover setup can be utilized for simply filesharing as well, just no need to enable ICS