XP and Win7 Networking is easy, says me who think to have a proper network you have to have at least a domain or two.

Networking Win7 is the same as for XP (for me anyway, I think homegroups are dumbed down pretend networking).
Be on the same subnet, fix the firewall usually I disable it, I always turn off Simple file sharing on XP so it has real networking and permissions like NT is supposed to have not dumbed down horribleness.
then can just use Network Places or run \\comp\share to access shares or map a network drive.
Make sure you use the username on the system you accessing not the local machine and all should be good.

It's 9x where it gets more complex where you have to make sure the usernames are the same for them to talk. and Win7 talking to XP you have to make sure it sends LM hash I think although I haven't really tried it and I did see it was possible for 9x to use NTLM so I will have to check this sometime.

But I haven't had my NT4/95B Pentium fun yet, still have exams 🙁, I will find out after exams.

I think dealing with security is sufficiently problematic itself. No doubt it is possible to configure one's firewall to eliminate any possibility of outside hackers getting into your network shares while still making it entirely transparent to the computers you actually use, but I think staying on the side of paranoia is best, especially since there still seem to be security vulnerabilities in SMB popping up every now and then.

In situations where I've absolutely had to use networking, I've used SSH.

I've got or had xp, 7, 98, 98se, debian, wfwg and now nt4 all networked together [and sometimes 2k and 95], lots fun and saves no end of time, also of course necessary anyway for mp games so we've had things networked ever since we had more than 1 pc. The biggest hiccups for me were:

- nt4 seems a lot more hassle than the other windows os's in that its easy to access my 7 box from nt4, cant yet see how to do it the other way round.

- my old mac running 9.1 and dave, didn't like my 2k machine being on the network, trying to connect to it would give the annoying message that it didnt exist 😜. have a feeling that was still the case when the 2000 was upgraded to xp.

Gets a bit addictive. In my brief forays into amigas and 68k macs my priority became getting them networked for file copying etc :lol.

Jorpho wrote:

I think dealing with security is sufficiently problematic itself. No doubt it is possible to configure one's firewall to eliminate any possibility of outside hackers getting into your network shares while still making it entirely transparent to the computers you actually use, but I think staying on the side of paranoia is best, especially since there still seem to be security vulnerabilities in SMB popping up every now and then.

In situations where I've absolutely had to use networking, I've used SSH.

Personally I think that is unnecessary I only use SCP for transfers when I'm too lazy to configure samba on linux.

If you have a firewall between internet and network then your fine why would you open SMB to the world that would just be crazy.

elianda wrote:

Twisted Pair aka TP aka RJ45-connectors

Actually, RJ45 is a telephony wiring standard with a keyed 8P8C connector, it has nothing to do with Ethernet-over-twisted-pair networking, which uses a non-keyed 8P8C connector, and a TIA wiring standard.

RJ45 is easily one of the most frequently misused terms in computing.

ratfink wrote:

- nt4 seems a lot more hassle than the other windows os's in that its easy to access my 7 box from nt4, cant yet see how to do it the other way round.

Accessing Vista or Win7 from a pre-2K machine is impossible without severely compromising the security of the Vista/7 machine.

Vista and 7 will keep trying lower levels of authentication against a machine until it succeeds, and will eventually drop to the NTLM scheme supported by NT. NT does the same, but the level it starts at is lower than the minimum level permitted by Vista/7's out-of-the-box security policies.

You can change Vista/7'a policy, but earlier versions of NTLM have security flaws, hence why they are no longer supported by default.

NT4 SP4+ support NTLMv2 so NT4 is fine, the real danger is from LM which is quite weak hence its replacement with NTLM with NT4 SP3.
9x uses LM by default hence the problem. If your actually worried about this your better off having some sort of point where you can droppoff stuff for 9x boxes to get so as not to compromise your paranoia.

awergh wrote:

Personally I think that is unnecessary I only use SCP for transfers when I'm too lazy to configure samba on linux.

Yes! Up With Laziness! 😁

If you have a firewall between internet and network then your fine why would you open SMB to the world that would just be crazy.

Indeed, I very much doubt you would want to do it on purpose, but it's hardly impossible to do by accident, I reckon.

I just received the 1m cable. It has a "nobbly" feel to it, as if the wires inside the black outer casing are "twisted". Is that normal? The coloured wires seen inside the end opaque plastic sockets match up. So, for both opaque plastic sockets, the orange wire is always at the 2nd on the right "channel/position", for example.

The four pairs of matching colors (orange with white-orange, blue with white-blue, etc) are twisted - it's a *TP cable (most commonly UTP - Unshielded Twisted Pair, with variations like STP (Shielded TP), FTP (Foiled TP), etc). Twisting is for avoiding cross interferences (don't ask me to explain this, I'm not very good with the physical part of networking 😀).

Thanks. The ebay advert says "UTP Patch Networking Cable". Hopefully, I'll be able to test it soon, by plugging it in to my NetGear router/modem, and the other end in to the network card, as seen in my o.p.

I have got the card from my o.p. successfully installed. It is attached to the NetGear router/modem, using the new cable that I mentioned recently. On the W98 machine, the network card was detected as a NE2000 compatible, and software from the W98 CD-ROM was installed. Also, I checked to see if W98 was set up for DHCP, and it was. Everything seems to be ready for testing. The problem I now have is that I don't have the time right now to do lots of homework about networking. I am completely clueless about it.

I could skip all of this, or if someone wants to help out, that would be awesome and I can test it based on some "instant advice" given here. Otherwise, I'll move on and test some other retro hardware. But anyway, here's what I've done so far -

In order to get my W-98SE and W-XP boxes to "see" each other, has it got something to do with network drives? Here is a screenshot from my W98 box. The H7 stuff is what my W98 PC is called. Also, I have set a c:\ subfolder on my HDD called "ep2000p" to be shared.

Also on my W98 box - I ticked the file access box. Good idea?

Here is my W-XP box. The red arrow shows that years ago, I must have successfully connected this box to another box, in order to move files from one box to another box. I haven't got the faintest idea how I did it. The brain cells that held that knowledge no longer exist.

Also, my W98 machine no longer shuts down correctly. It hangs on the "Shutting down Windows" splash screen. This has occured now the network card is installed.

In order to get my W-98SE and W-XP boxes to "see" each other, has it got something to do with network drives? Here is a screenshot from my W98 box. The H7 stuff is what my W98 PC is called. Also, I have set a c:\ subfolder on my HDD called "ep2000p" to be shared.

Assuming I'm understanding your explanation correctly, that's not going to work. To see the ep2000p folder from your XP machine, you'll need to share that folder on the 98 machine, then map the drive from your XP machine. In other words, go onto your XP box, choose 'Map Network Drive" and point it to the \\H7d7q1\ep2000p folder.

Likewise, if you want to view files from your XP box on your 98 box, you'll need to share a folder on the XP box and map the drive from the 98 machine pointed to that folder. Doing it from that direction can be a bit of a pain with permissions, though, so I'd stick with just using your XP box to view shares from your 98 box, and not the other way around.

Thanks a lot, I understand this advice, I'll go with that approach.
Please forgive my ignorance and I guess I have to call it laziness too -

On my XP box, I attempted to map a network drive. When I clicked the Finish button (as seen in the image below), I get this error message: "The drive could not be mapped because no network was found." So then I click on the Browse button, and the pop up window to the right appears. I'm sorry, but I don't know what to do next.

Do I run W-XP's network setup wizard? I tried doing that, and in doing so I switched on file sharing and printing, but I wonder if I'm doing all of this the "wrong way around". It's as if I'm telling the W-XP machine to be a file sharing host. I want to just look at the W-98 files from the W-XP machine, because as you say that would be easier. I also set the W-XP's firewall to allow file and printer sharing.

There could very well be something in your router that needs to be configured, too. It's kind of hard to say.

When you browse the network through Network Neighborhood (W98) or My Network Places->Microsoft Windows Network (WXP), can each machine see the other one? Are they set up on the same workgroup?

When I browse the networks on either machine, I cannot see the other machine. Right ATM, I cannot say if both machines are on the same workgroup, because I've momentarily taken a break from the W98 test mobo, but my guess is that they do not share a common workgroup. (Sorry, I don't know what a workgroup is. I really am that ignorant about this stuff.)

I'm 99.8% certain that the W98 workgroup name is called WORKGROUP, and I know for sure that the WXP workgroup name is called MSHOME. I guess I need to "synchronise" these two workgroups, so that they are no longer seperate. Is that easy to do? Thanks very much for any advice on this.

I don't have a Win98 machine up and running at the moment, but to change the workgroup on XP, right click on 'My Computer' and go to Properties ->'Computer Name' tab, and click 'Change'.

But... if you browse the network, you should still be able to see two workgroups as you have it now. Having the machines in different workgroups can cause strange problems when sharing files, but it shouldn't prevent the machines from at least seeing each other.

This is both interesting and odd at the same time. The following screenshot might help to understand why I'm having problems. My WXP (SP3) screenshot differs from yours. I can only change computer name. I cannot join a domain, and also I have no Network ID button. I wonder if this is because (ages ago now) I shut down some Windows services?

I was getting weird HDD grinding noises, and I was clutching at straws to make it stop, and so I decided to shut some services down, to see if that fixed the problem. It didn't, but this happened so long ago that I've forgotten what services I stopped. I keep meaning to scrap WXP as my main machine, and install W7, but I never do...

Edit 1: I've also got a Vista machine connected to my NetGear box, which I haven't messed about with. I could just try that. I'll test that in the morning.

Edit 2: The Vista machine has a workgroup named WORKGROUP, which is the same name as the W98 workgroup. That could be useful...

Edit 3: I'm using XP Home, and not XP Professional. I wonder if that's why my screenshot is different?

XP home and Pro's dialog boxes are the same there
you need to follow this guide and set everything back to default:
http://www.blackviper.com/2008/05/19/black-vi … configurations/
in the future, do some reading before messing with settings you don't understand... good thing you're asking what to do to setup the network now!

if you want to browse to another computer with a 2k or newer windows, you need to expand the "Microsoft Windows Network" group you see in the above screenshot... older windows takes a little while for it to "scan" through the network for other computers/shares... so explorer may appear to lock up... just leave it alone, it's just windows being stupid... if nothing shows up, you have done something wrong or windows is really stupid (happens)