Home networking?

[mrdata2003]

i'm want to connect my kids pc to mine so i don't have to keep going up and down the stairs (i'm lazy) and was wondering if you have to have the same O/S on both systems? mine is XPpro and the kids is win98se.

also i've got a network card for my cable broadband, do i need to put in another network card or do i need a hub?

[Gristy]

First up you will need another network card in your PC. UNLESS you get a Cable Router and plug them both into that using Straight Cables. But the cheaper option would be to buy a CrossOver Network Cable chuck a Network Card in each PC and connect them up that way. he will not need XP Pro on his pc XPP-98SE should network OK. Ive had some problems with filesharing before over the windows network and in which case i end up just using FTP. but we only normally use the network mostly for ip based games which work fine & internet connection sharing. seeing as we had broadband we used to send the files via MSN as it was easy and didnt have to have shares open and stuff.

hope that helped.

[TekieB]

If you put the XP disk in the 98 machine there is a nice little "Home Network Wizzard" that will config everything nice and easy.

My $0.02