Home Network???

I was rearranging books in my shelf as I'll have to buy many more now,considering my engineering course will start shortly.While doing so,I came upon a hand-book on HTML designing (Cliff notes).On the last page,where they usually print other books,I found a title,"Setting up your Windows 98 Home Network".Now.its not available in any book store I know and I can't buy it from the net as shipping prices from US to somewhere in south-asia is exhorbent.But I'm fascinated by the idea of setting up a p2p network or an intranet(whatever its closer to).Can anyone provide me with some info. about this concept or some good links?

Setting up a network is easy. You don't need a book. Get an ethernet card (or NIC for network interface card) for each computer. Then buy a hub, switch, or router (use Google to find out some of the differences - you didn't provide many details) and run ethernet (aka CAT5) cable between each NIC and the hub/switch/router. You can also do it with wireless routers and cards operating off of the 802.11b (or other) protocols. What I just said was basic and a bit simplified, but it honestly isn't a whole lot harder than that. Depending on the hardware you have/want, and how many computers you want to do, the project will cost between $100 and $500 US (those are estimates, of course. You can go cheaper or more expensive). To reitterate: you don't need a book to do it, just Google.

If you're using winxp then it's realli simple, it detects everything for you. But if you use win98, you got more to do, but it's still not extremely hard. XP's the best but.

I guess this site should get you going

Thanks Floating Point and Blackrat.That was excellent!:)
Just what I needed.
BTW,Blackrat,have u mastered in electronics?U certainly sound like u have!
U seem to have worked with networking,isn't it?

has anyone managed to (or is anyone aware of a way to) network WinXP with any other windows version ME or older?

I haven't mastered in electronics, but I went through hell trying to get my router set up :) So I did a lot of reading and stuff, trying to figure out what it was... it turned out to be some retarded problem with the router not being able to get the IP from the cable modem, so I had to unplug the modem, plug it back in, wait for it to reset and send the settings to the router... it still gives me some trouble, I shouldn't have bought a $35 router :)

But I did cut and run my own cables and crimped the connectors on them... it honestly isn't that hard if you can use Google occasionally to find information.

edit: Perspective, I'm not sure if this qualifies for what you're trying to do, but I have a WinXP and two Win98 computers connected to my router, but they aren't filesharing or print sharing, just sharing a modem.

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Originally posted by blackrat364
edit: Perspective, I'm not sure if this qualifies for what you're trying to do, but I have a WinXP and two Win98 computers connected to my router, but they aren't filesharing or print sharing, just sharing a modem.

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yeah, i have a WinXP and a WinME comp sharing a modem via a router as well. i wanted them to be able to 'see' each other. like a 2 computer P2P network

We have xp, 98 and 2000 all conected via a router and able to share files.

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Originally posted by Clyde
We have xp, 98 and 2000 all conected via a router and able to share files.

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how did you get 98 to be part of the network? i tried the normal MS network setup stuff but no dice....

Hmm didnt have a problem, in fact we have two 98 computers on the network, neither resulted in any problems.

What problem do you have?

Theroetically, XP should be able to do everything it needs to the Windows 98 computers, but the Windows 98 computers are going to give you trouble unless you make sure they have no reason to.

>>how did you get 98 to be part of the network? i tried the normal MS network setup stuff but no dice....<<

Did you try specifing an IP address? (ie 192.168.0.XXX for LANs) then ping the PC's NIC, that is ensure the PCs network card is working.

Windows 98, ME has to be re-started if the network is not on when the PC boots or if any of the settings change, the newer MS OSs do not.

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how did you get 98 to be part of the network? i tried the normal MS network setup stuff but no dice....

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You must run the Windows XP CD once on each non-XP machine and select Perform other tasks. Then select setup a home network and run the network wizard. It will install the necessary files at that time. It will ask you to reboot the machine and then it should work.

However, DO NOT rely on the Network Neighborhood or My Network Connections (in XP) to correctly show all the systems on the network. Microsoft's NetBIOS tables do not update very fast. It is not uncommon on a 100 system network for about 50 of them not to show up.

To test whether or not there is indeed a connection to a certain system on the LAN:

Start->Run:
\\<computer name>

cool, thanx for the input people, i will give this a try when i have a chance. :)