This might help:

http://www.philscomputerlab.com/network-tutorial.html

Should be similar enough with Windows 95.

well, its a direct wired internet connection, not really over a router, i treid your steps, but didnt really work, they are directly wired pc to pc.

Directly connecting to a computer is flaky at best. Connect it to your router, flick on DHCP, and set up file sharing for compatibility. I myself recommend running Samba (with settings old Windows can digest) on a Unix box and isolate the old machines from the internet.

Nic-93 wrote:

well, its a direct wired internet connection, not really over a router, i treid your steps, but didnt really work, they are directly wired pc to pc.

A standard Ethernet cable will not work unless if one of the nic's have Auto MDI-X, other wise you will need a crossover cable.

well, i have a old 25 pin male to female cable connector, is that a crossover cable?

That's NOT a network cable, that's (probably) a straight serial or parallel cable.

Since you're talking about network sharing between retro and modern systems, my experience can be summarized in the following: I'm tired of trying to make older OS's see folders of the modern system, making specific accounts, sharing folders, having issues with access from one side or the other and on top of these also having the not-so-stable behavior of those OS's.

How I solved it once and for all? Setup an FTP server on the modern system and only allow access from your LAN to one folder. Yeap, setup a server once and forget about it, it doesn't take more than 5' minutes and everything will be able to connect to it. There are FTP clients available for all OS's that work beautifully so from all your retro machines you can just connect and transfer files without actually having to configure the network, only bother to have your NIC functioning correctly.

As for the OP's question, this is not a network cable. Although you can do stuff with this type of connection if you value your mental health hook the PC's on the router using ethernet cables.

I know how annoying home networking can be, But I was positively surprised when I tried to network Windows 98 and Windows 8.1. That's why I made the video.

The speed is acceptable but it's really the convenience that I like once everything is working. I now have all the drivers, demos, patches on the network share, which makes my life a bit easier. I used to use USB sticks a lot, that also works well, but it's not as convenient.

konc wrote:

As for the OP's question, this is not a network cable. Although you can do stuff with this type of connection if you value your mental health hook the PC's on the router using ethernet cables.

🤣 That about sums it up.

I wouldn't call a direct connection between to PCs flaky, though you have to pay attention when setting it up:
- only use a crossover cable. Unfortunately, there usually aren't any markings on the cable. Since routers became commonplace, crossover cables are not common anymore. Most likely you'll have to purchase one
- set both computers up for a static IP. Both have to be in the same subnet, i.e. one is 192.168.0.1, the other 192.168.0.2
- both computers have to be in the same workgroup
- on the Windows 8 machine, you probably have to enable file sharing in the firewall

These are not step-by-step, you'll have to do some googling for yourself if you don't know how to do these things.

Myself, I solved the problem years ago when I bought my first NAS. Compared to network sharing between two computers, this is as painless as it can possibly be. Every Windows and Linux machine can connect to it via SMB or NFS. I'm certain it's also possible to setup FTP but didn't need it yet.

Something else that worked for me, because you mentioned NAS. Many modern all-in-one modems/switch/router/WLAN have a USB port in the back for networked storage. I have a TP-Link modem and tried it out last year, it worked very well. So if you network device supports this, it could be an easy solution.

Cross over adapters are easy to find http://www.ebay.com/bhp/crossover-adapter

If they are both GigE then you shouldn't need a crossover cable. (Since this is Win95 probly not many if any GigE cards that support 95 tho heh)

Haven't watched Phils video yet so may be going over steps covered, but as your obviously new to networking we'll start with the real basics.

1. To start with plug both into your router if you can and run IPconfig on the Win8 PC and Winipcfg on Win95 from a command prompt If everything is set up right both should get similar an IP address.
2. Still in a command prompt can you "ping x.x.x.x" (IP address of each PC) You may have to turn off windows firewall at this point.

If you get this far then we know the 2 PC's can see each other. I recommend connecting to the router for the DHCP assigned IP address. if you don't get an IP address we know something is wrong. Assigning static IP's is harder to work out if they truly are on the same network.
Once your up and running then we can start locking things down again like firewalls, removing internet access, etc.

Its a bit of a learning experience to start with, but stay with it as it makes life so much easier and majority of steps are the same across any OS with only slight differences

the crossover cable is a clean yellow color, right? found one of those at work and have it home.

konc wrote:

How I solved it once and for all? Setup an FTP server on the modern system and only allow access from your LAN to one folder. Yeap, setup a server once and forget about it, it doesn't take more than 5' minutes and everything will be able to connect to it. There are FTP clients available for all OS's that work beautifully so from all your retro machines you can just connect and transfer files without actually having to configure the network, only bother to have your NIC functioning correctly.

I like this idea too, but the major downside is that you can't stream data, i.e. anything you want to work with has to be copied to the local hard drive.

It is definitely worth a try for diagnostic purposes before trying to sort out Windows networking, though. I prefer the mini SFTP server from http://www.coreftp.com/server/ .

Nic-93 wrote:

the crossover cable is a clean yellow color, right? found one of those at work and have it home.

Some are, but they don't have to be.

I thought of the crossover cable too, but surely any computer capable of running Windows 8 would have the necessary hardware to work without one?

Jorpho wrote:

I like this idea too, but the major downside is that you can't stream data, i.e. anything you want to work with has to be copied to the local hard drive.

Well, you're totally right, but I was most probably thinking of much older retro-pc's such as DOS and Win3-95-98 machines (where the networking problems actually exist). I really can't think of anything practically usefull to stream on those, but your point is noted.

btw, something I believe I didn't stress out enough on my first post on this: For me, unless you have a better/faster/requiring less effort solution that I'd honestly like to hear, FTP is the only way to go for frequent transfers of files to a DOS-only machine.

But then I just might be the minority of those maintaining/giving priority to their DOS-only machines 😁

konc wrote:

btw, something I believe I didn't stress out enough on my first post on this: For me, unless you have a better/faster/requiring less effort solution that I'd honestly like to hear, FTP is the only way to go for frequent transfers of files to a DOS-only machine.

Well, sure, there's the Microsoft networking client for DOS. But again, the only advantage there is that you can stream data and it most definitely isn't as easy to get going as FTP, at least these days. (It takes up a big chunk of RAM, too.)

Jorpho wrote:

konc wrote:

btw, something I believe I didn't stress out enough on my first post on this: For me, unless you have a better/faster/requiring less effort solution that I'd honestly like to hear, FTP is the only way to go for frequent transfers of files to a DOS-only machine.

Well, sure, there's the Microsoft networking client for DOS. But again, the only advantage there is that you can stream data and it most definitely isn't as easy to get going as FTP, at least these days. (It takes up a big chunk of RAM, too.)

That's something I need to to lay my hands on, even just for the heck of it. That's the first time I hear about this client and, although I'm sticking to my FTP convenience 😀 , I'll definitely try it

Jorpho wrote:

Well, sure, there's the Microsoft networking client for DOS. But again, the only advantage there is that you can stream data and it most definitely isn't as easy to get going as FTP, at least these days. (It takes up a big chunk of RAM, too.)

Curious what the current state of ease/difficulty is to get that MS Network Client for DOS to mount modern SMB shares, for example from a Synology server on a local network?