Networking 2 PC's

The_Scary_Man

I have 2 PC's at home and was wondering what the best way was to hook them up to each other for games an ' ting. One is a PII 233 and the other is a PIII 500.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Also the cheaper the better

Ta Kindly.

azezil

Two network cards, crossover cable.
Quoted from marx-computers.com:

Network Kit

Kit for networking 2 PC's
2x 10/100 PCI Networkcard
+ 5m TP crossover cable (no Hub required)
supports Full-Duplex mode, 32bit PCI bus master
Windows 95/98, NT 3.51/4.0, 2000
Novell NetWare, SCO Unix, Linux

Euro 31.74 incl. VAT 20%
IEP 25.00 incl. VAT 20%

TCP/IP, static IP's - buda bing home network!

strat

Simple bi-directional paralell cable is proberly the cheapest at about 12euro

set up a tcp/ip conenction which is fine for games - get about 70k a sec transfering files tho

works a treat on a budget

The_Scary_Man

F*ck that was quick.

Thanks

azezil

I tried that bi-directional parallel cable or null modem, before and couldn't get it to work... granted i didn't know jack about networking at the time!

Fergus

look for some 10base2 network cards (BNC connector) and two t-pieces and terminators, and a length of rg58 co-ax network cable.

You tend to get a lot of places upgrading from co-ax to twisted pair ethernet, and a lot of this sort of kit gets thrown out..

Boston

all 10baset is good for is the net, like you can pick up a 100baset card on the cheap from around 10 euro, also null cable is crossover cable. you want to see how much of it you need first

Gavin

null cable is crossover cable yeah. but for the serial port..

Gav

strat

dont get serial port null modem cable - its only 115200 bbs which gives u over 14kbps transfering data but i get arount 70k on a paralell cable

DiscoStu

i woudnt touch the parallel cable for anywhint but a printer. i networked the 2 puters in my house with the parallel and the computers were totally unusable when any sort of network activity went on. one of the computer is a 1.4ghz athlon and the cpu was maxed out at 100% during all file transfers. my old 500mhz PIII was totally unusable it took almost 10 seconds for any mouse input to appear on the screen. get 2 cheap 10/100 nics they are dirt cheap and a bit of cross over cable.

The_Scary_Man

Okay I installed the 2 ethernet cards in the PCs and connected them using crossover cable so how do I create a conection between the 2?

Gambler

Assumin Win9*...

Right Click Network Neightbourhood.
Properties.
See that you have a Nic and Client For microsoft Networks there..
(If not come back here)
If you have TCP/IP Click it.. if not click ADD then Protocols then Microsoft Then TCP/IP. Then Double Click it
Click on Assign a static IP Address..
On the first machine the IP can be 192.168.0.1 and on the second 192.168.0.2
Both Machines should have 255.255.255.0 As the Subnet Mask
Then go to the identification tab and Make sure that both machines have different computer names (whatever you want) and the same workgroup Name
Lastly go back to the General tab and click on File and Printer sharing and make sure that Share Files is Ticked (if you wanna share them)

Once you restart your machine you should be able to right click on any folder, click on sharing and you can make that folder visible on the network from there

Any probs, ask someone else :P

azezil

Start - settings - control panel - networking:

If tcp/ip isn't installed, do it!
Once tcp/ip is installed, go into its properties. Specify IP address.
Something like 197.222.22.1 and the other machine to 197.222.22.2, and give them both the same subnet mask, e.g. 255.255.255.0

Give the machines unique names, if they don't already have.

Reboot.

Connect the crossover cable. Go into dos on one of the machines and type "ping (followed by the IP address of the other computer)" and press return. If you get a message "Pinging (IP address of other machine) with 32 bytes of data: "
If you get "Reply from (IP address): bytes=32 time<10ms TTL = 128" or something similar you've been successful. If you get "Request Timed out" something went wrong.

[edit]
Ah bet to it!:)
[/edit]

strat

jesus lads whats this with awkward ip's

i always got for 10.0.0.x and x+1 for each other machine

anyone got this kinda setup workin under XP - i can setup a tcp/ip connection for games n stuff but i cant get anything to appear in "My network places" on either PC

azezil

You have to share a drive/ folder before something will show up in "My network places"

The_Scary_Man

Okay lads, my little network is up and running.

Thanks for all the help and info

Scary

logic1

Originally posted by azezil
Start - settings - control panel - networking:

If tcp/ip isn't installed, do it!
Once tcp/ip is installed, go into its properties. Specify IP address.
Something like 197.222.22.1 and the other machine to 197.222.22.2, and give them both the same subnet mask, e.g. 255.255.255.0

[/edit]

They're not even private IPs afaik.

.logic.