retro games 100 wrote:

I could connect it to the other free network socket on the back of the WinXP box, and then connect the other end of this straight cable to one of the 2 free sockets on the modem/router device.

You could do that, but you wouldn't gain anything.

That mainboard with 2 ethernet sockets must be fairly new. I know that some boards allow you to "team or pair" two ethernet ports to get more bandwidth. The other thing you can do is to connect that machine to two networks, basically turning into a rounter. It could also be used for redundancy. If one port fails or one ISP goes down (assuming you have different ISPs).

Anything hooked up to your netgear, will be part of that same network. The netgear box hands out the IP addresses, unless you configre it otherwise.

If you tell us what exactly you want to achieve, we should be able to help you!

Yeah, that Netgear should be fine. Just get another straight-through patch cable (i.e., not a crossover), and plug the Win98 box into one of the open ports on your router. Your router is probably already doing DHCP, so make sure your Win98 machine is set up for that.

retro games 100 wrote:

Can I buy a "RJ45 cable", and connect this card (on my Windows 98 SE box) to say my main Windows XP machine? And then transfer files from machine to machine?

If this is your goal, I would strongly recommend getting USB support on your 98 SE box (one way or another, if you don't have it already) and transferring files via USB drives. Networking is more trouble than it is worth, unless you want to get some LAN-specific applications going.

i'm different - I think networking's muchly convenient over USB / media transferring once you do get it working. It certainly is a spine-saver at least 😁

Though be wary of access issues between Vista/7 vs. 95/98/ME shares. The easiest workaround is VirtualPC2007 running Win98 w/ vpc additions where you can simply drag and drop straight to your w98 pc (with a undo disk enabled so you don't bloat your VHD by any chance)

Basically it boils down to this:
Crossover is needed if you connect two PCs directly because send/receive has to be exchanged like on a Nullmodemcable
BUT
there exists a auto sense functionality where the network interface detects normal/crossover mode.

This exists since about 1990 and after 1992 nearly every interface has this feature. Even if your old ISA network card does not have this feature, your netgear switch does.
So always buy normal cables and trust auto sense. Fiddling around with crossover cables just increases the chance to not knowing what type of cable you just have.

Twisted Pair aka TP aka RJ45-connectors use a star like design, all PCs are connected to the switch. Usually a router has one port that is slightly separated of the others. This is called Uplink and is mostly identical with the port next to it, just crossover. You can not use both at the same time.

Since the card is 10 MBit/s speed, a low end TP cable is suffcient. So CAT3 cables are fully sufficient. Maybe even an older ISDN cable will do fine. If you buy new cables, I would go for CAT5E or better, since those cables can also be used for faster network connections.

For a easy start of the network it is ok if you have a DHCP server running in your netgear router.
Then just say the network software on PC side to aquire a IP adress automatically and enter the IP address of your netgear router as primary DNS name server and Gateway. Most network software will also read the Gateway address from the DHCP server.

elianda wrote:

This exists since about 1990 and after 1992 nearly every interface has this feature.

I think it's standard with the relatively recent gigabyte-ethernet standard, but I'm pretty sure this auto-sense functionality does not date as far back as 1992.

Well just this example:
Thomas Conrad TC5046 network card (C) Thomas Conrad 1990
photo: http://mail.lipsia.de/~enigma/neu/ps2/TC5046.jpg
This card was produced around 1992 according to chip dates.

quote from the MCA ADF configuration template file:

NamedItem Prompt "Autopolarity and Link functions" choice "Enabled " pos[2] = xxx00xxxb choice "Disabled " pos[2] […]
Show full quote

NamedItem
Prompt "Autopolarity and Link functions"
choice "Enabled " pos[2] = xxx00xxxb
choice "Disabled " pos[2] = xxx11xxxb

Help
"Use function keys 'F5' and 'F6' to enable or disable Autopolarity
detect and Link integrity function in the 10BASE-T media interface.
The default is Enabled. This option has no effect on AUI or
10BASE-2 interface types.

When this option is Enabled, a crossed wiring error (RD+/- pair
reversed) is ignored, and the link integrity test is enabled.
Changing the setting disables autopolarity checking, and
allows compatibility with concentrators that do not support the
link integrity test. Disable this setting only if the TC5046
must attach to a concentrator that does not fully conform to
the IEEE 802.3 specification. In that case, you must make
sure your wiring pinouts conform to the diagrams shown in
Chapter 9 of the User's Guide."

[/quote]

Awesome assistance as usual here on Vogons - thanks!

Re: cabling. Ah I see what you guys are saying. All I need do is plug one straight cable from the network card, in to the router. That means I only need a 1 metre (meter) cable, because the Win98SE machine sits right next to the NetGear box.

Re: what exactly do you want to achieve? Primarily, I would like to test the ISA network card from the o.p., to see if it works. If it does work, I would like to test transfering files to and from a Windows 98 SE box, to a Windows XP box. The card will be installed on a Windows 98 SE box. Also, I would be interested to see if it works in "pure" DOS!

Re: USB, etc. Currently, I do a lot of compact flash drive swapping. And I do mean a lot. So, this sounded good to me:-

Re: Networking is a "spine saver". Hehe! 😀

elianda wrote:

Basically it boils down to this: Crossover is needed if you connect two PCs directly because send/receive has to be exchanged li […]
Show full quote

Basically it boils down to this:
Crossover is needed if you connect two PCs directly because send/receive has to be exchanged like on a Nullmodemcable
BUT
there exists a auto sense functionality where the network interface detects normal/crossover mode.

This exists since about 1990 and after 1992 nearly every interface has this feature. Even if your old ISA network card does not have this feature, your netgear switch does.
So always buy normal cables and trust auto sense. Fiddling around with crossover cables just increases the chance to not knowing what type of cable you just have.

Twisted Pair aka TP aka RJ45-connectors use a star like design, all PCs are connected to the switch. Usually a router has one port that is slightly separated of the others. This is called Uplink and is mostly identical with the port next to it, just crossover. You can not use both at the same time.

Since the card is 10 MBit/s speed, a low end TP cable is suffcient. So CAT3 cables are fully sufficient. Maybe even an older ISDN cable will do fine. If you buy new cables, I would go for CAT5E or better, since those cables can also be used for faster network connections.

For a easy start of the network it is ok if you have a DHCP server running in your netgear router.
Then just say the network software on PC side to aquire a IP adress automatically and enter the IP address of your netgear router as primary DNS name server and Gateway. Most network software will also read the Gateway address from the DHCP server.

the ISDN cable won't work "out of the box" IIRC... it is wired differently... you can make it work by chopping off the connectors and recrimping them correctly to TIA-569A or 569B though... ISDN cables are wired USOC style IIRC, just like a phone cord is

Also, I would be interested to see if it works in "pure" DOS!

It should, but be warned... DOS networking is a pain in the ass, even when you know what you're doing. For a networking newbie... well, you should probably stock up on beer and put padding on any surface you may be tempted to bash your head against. 😁

[I'm half kidding about the head bashing... but not about the beer. 😵 ]

If you want an ISA network card I'd junk the NE2000 design and go with something like the 3Com 3c509b. The NE2000 reference design had horrible performance.

Bear in mind you're going to get about 800kbytes - 1mbyte/sec from a good 10mbit card (like the 3Com), but potentially significantly less with the NE2000 design.

retro games 100 wrote:

Re: what exactly do you want to achieve? Primarily, I would like to test the ISA network card from the o.p., to see if it works. If it does work, I would like to test transfering files to and from a Windows 98 SE box, to a Windows XP box. The card will be installed on a Windows 98 SE box. Also, I would be interested to see if it works in "pure" DOS!

If you're dead set on doing this, might it at least be a good idea to start with a card that you can get drivers for, or at least easily identify? PCI NICs with good compatibility are not difficult to find cheap.

megatron-uk wrote:

If you want an ISA network card I'd junk the NE2000 design and go with something like the 3Com 3c509b. The NE2000 reference design had horrible performance.

I thought a card like that would use some kind of NE2000 compatibility mode in DOS anyway.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

It should, but be warned... DOS networking is a pain in the ass, even when you know what you're doing. For a networking newbie... well, you should probably stock up on beer and put padding on any surface you may be tempted to bash your head against. 😁

Seconded. Even if you can persuade it to work, the relevant drivers and whatnot take up too much conventional memory to allow you to do other exotic things once they're loaded.

Hmm I remember my DOS networking experiements and didn't find it too difficult. The cards I used where NE1000 and the software AFAIK Novel Lite or something like that.

It was quite easy to map drives.

Ages ago I had this Unisys 486 with onboard NE2000. I had W95B installed and this had all the drivers. I used this computer to connect to the internet through the Uni ethernet port in our rooms.

5u3 wrote:

Used 10/100Mbit network switches are very cheap these days...

Yup. And maulwurf is right about the WLAN port being the router part and the other 4 being the switch part, at least with the routers I have laying around.

One tip to get the cheap, I've also used old modems a couple times, the ones that have 4 RJ45 sockets 😁

I got a couple of those for free, and maybe even some computer shops may be getting rid of wired switches or routers as everything these days "must" be wireless.

Bleh, I'll take cables over wireless any day of the week. Compared to wireless it's really quite effortless, except the easily solved firewall issues I had a couple times.

DonutKing wrote:

Cat5e is for 100mbit/second while cat5(no-"e") is for 10mbit/second

Actually, Cat5 is rated for 100MBit/sec while Cat5E is rated for 1GBit/sec. Cat3 is the 10MBit/sec standard.

Cat6 is rated up to 1GBit/sec, just like Cat5E, but is much more robust against interference, and Cat6A is rated for 10GBit/sec.

I checked, and you were right!! 😁

And all these years I wanted only cat5e L O L!

Anyway, NIC's are dirt cheap second hand these days, might as well stock up a bit if you intend to do some networking with them later.

On another note, how's networking 9x with XP?

DonutKing wrote:

you had to have every PC in the network switched on, as it was a bus network.

Not switched on, but definitely connected. If you took a T-piece off one of the NICs, it messes up the impedance and can either do nothing, or give intermittent instability. Obviously if you removed the cable from one side of a T-piece or removed a terminator, the whole thing would go down.

Fun fact, if you were using a hub instead of a switch, your network was physically a star topology, but electronically a bus topology, since only one station can transmit at any given time.

I remember this from an internship I did during school holidays. Another intern (and he was told this), did some networking "maintenance" and the whole network was down.

I also did a few "maintenance" jobs, which required me to do whatever was required within 30s or something like that. So if a user wanted his PC moved and needed longer cables, you had 30s to do it. Talk about pressure 🤣

Tetrium wrote:

Bleh, I'll take cables over wireless any day of the week. Compared to wireless it's really quite effortless, except the easily solved firewall issues I had a couple times.

I have a spot for wireless. More and more people choose to have a notebook and Wi-Fi is awesome for quick LAN sessions. We did this the other day, creating an Ad-hoc Wi-Fi network on one machine, everyone else connected to this one and the LAN party was underway 🤣

Couldn't have been easier!

Quick update: I've ordered a 1m cable. Should get it soon. Just want to see if this thing works really! It's a good learning experience. Appreciate all the advice! If I ever do any "serious" networking, I'll ditch the card for something better. Thanks.

Networking is heaps of fun. With Windows 7 it's sooo easy. Create a home group on one machine, it gives you a password, type it into the other ones to join, and then start sharing resources.

Awesome when you have a lot of machines and want access to your TV shows from all of them 🤣

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Networking is heaps of fun. With Windows 7 it's sooo easy. Create a home group on one machine, it gives you a password, type it into the other ones to join, and then start sharing resources.

Awesome when you have a lot of machines and want access to your TV shows from all of them 🤣

Weird...I haven't been able to network my Win7 rig with any of my XP rigs, the networking part of Win7 seems totally different!
Btw, I was never given a password or anything. But I'm a newb when it comes to Win7 networking anyway 😁

Sorry I wasn't clear enough. I meant amongst machines with W7 on all of them...

I don't use XP anymore, just through the XP Mode (Virtual Machine) if I have to.

I'm sure that networking between XP and W7 might be a bit more challenging.