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Computers This is all the hardware you need to network two computers: two network cards, T-connectors (2), 50Ω terminators (2), and cable. Networking: it’s easier than you think If you have two computers in your home or small business, why not network them? It’s easy to do, doesn’t cost much & has lots of benefits. By GREG SWAIN Many people now have two or more computers at home or as part of a small business. Typically, one machine will be an old 286 or 386 machine, while the other will be a 486 or even a Pentium machine with full multimedia capabilities. Quite often, the older machine will have been pushed to one side and left unloved. As most people discover, it’s 4  Silicon Chip not worth selling an old computer. It might have cost $2000 three years ago but it’s not worth much today. It’s a fact – no-one wants to buy an old clunker. As a result, the old machine is no longer used or is rele­gated to a humble word processing role. But there’s a lot more that you can do with an obsolete computer, as we shall see. For the price of a couple of cheap network cards and a few metres of cable, you can connect your two machines together. This has a number of benefits, the most obvious being that you no longer have to “walk” floppy discs between machines to exchange files. In addition, networking can give each user access to the other computer’s hard disc drive – very handy if you’re running short of space. Often, however, the older machine will be used as a file server or as a print server (or both). A “server” can generally be regarded as the central comput­er on a network, even though it might not be the most powerful computer in the group. Typically, it allows other users on the network to access common resources, such as a printer or files. In addition, users connected to a network can share their own resources with others on the network. You have a lot of flexibil­ity in setting up a network – it’s your choice as to what you share and with whom. You can even share different resources with different peo­ple. We won’t get too complicated here, though. Instead, we’ll confine ourselves to a simple two-computer network and show you how to install it and set it up. Network benefits Using an otherwise obsolete computer as a printer server can be a great time saver. Basically, the printer is connected to the server and the print job quickly spools onto its hard disc when ever you print from the remote machine. The server then takes over the printing job while you get back to work. If you do a lot of big printing jobs like mail merges or desktop publishing, the advantages of a print server will be obvious. You can quickly resume working on the new machine while the job is still printing. Alternatively, if both machines are used by different mem­bers of the Each network card is installed in a vacant slot on the motherboard. On older cards, you will need to check jumper settings before plugging the board in. Later cards are usually configured after installation using software. household or business, there’s no argument over who gets the printer. Both can print jobs without swapping printer cables or unplugging and relocating the printer. Using an old machine as a printer server can also be an advantage if your new machine runs Windows 95 and you are unable to obtain a suitable printer driver. This is sometimes the case with older printers which are now considered obsolete. The way around this problem is to use the existing Windows 3.11 printer driver on the old machine. Another area where a network is an advantage is if you have a fax/modem. By fitting the fax/modem to the Checking Resources In Windows 95 Fig.1 (above) & Fig.2 (right): you can easily check on available system resources in Windows 95 by double-clicking the System icon in control panel, then clicking the Device Manager tab, selecting Computer and clicking Properties. Fig.3: (above): the SMC8416 card was a Plug and Play device and installed easily. If you get device conflicts, assign the resources man­ ually using this dialog box. January 1997  5 The computers are connected by first fitting the T-connectors to the BNC sockets on the networks cards and then installing the coaxial cable. The open end of each T-connector is then fitted with a 50Ω terminator, as shown at right. older machine, your work will not be brought to a halt every time you want to send or receive files or faxes. We’ve already mentioned file sharing via a network as an advantage. Obviously, if you have people working on both ma­chines, a network makes it easy to swap files and provides common access to various files. Essentially, you “map” the hard disc drive(s) or individual directories (folders in Win95 talk) on the remote machine so that they appear as local drives on your own machine. This can also be handy if the older machine lacks a CD-ROM drive. By sharing the CD-ROM drive on the new machine, the user of the older machine can connect to it and use it just like a local drive. The hardware required You don’t need much in the way of hardware for a simple network – just two network cards (one for each computer), a network cable, two “T” connectors, and a couple of 50Ω termi­ nators. 6  Silicon Chip A typical NE2000-compatible network card (the most common type) costs about $50, although better units start from around $65. Low-cost cards will do for a basic installation, unless you are transferring large amounts of data and speed is import­ant. There are several types of cable configurations available but it’s easiest to use RG-58 coaxial cable fitted with BNC connectors. This type of cable is also known as thin-Ethernet cable and a 10-metre length will cost about $15. To that, you can add another $20 or so for the T-connectors and terminators. So for $150 or less, you should be able to buy all the hardware you need to network two computers. Of course, this will depend on the networking cards you buy and the length of cable required. Avoiding conflicts Generally speaking, a network card will fall into one of three categories: (1) software configurable plug and play (PnP), (2) software configurable and (3) hardware (jumper) configur­ able. The installation procedure for each varies somewhat but it’s usually only a matter of following the instructions that come with the card. A software configurable card is set up after it has been installed in the computer, using a small utility program supplied on a floppy disc. By contrast, a hardware configurable card uses various jumpers to select the IRQ (interrupt request) address, the I/O port and sometimes the memory address. The idea is to choose settings that don’t conflict with other items of hard­ware before installing the card. Windows 95 makes it easy to check which resources are free. You do this by first double-clicking the System icon in Control Panel. You then select the Device Manager tab, after which you click Computer and the Properties button (see Fig.1). This brings up the Computer Properties dialog box so that you can view cur­rent IRQ settings and address allocations (Fig.2). Windows for Workgroups offers no such facility but that really doesn’t present a problem. If you only have a bare-bones system, the factory default settings on the card will usually work. If some other item of hardware, such as a sound card, has been added, check its settings before configuring the network card. Of course, you can always go for the well-proven trial and error approach. If everything still works after installing the network card, no changes are needed. If something stops working (eg, a sound card), simply change the IRQ setting and/or the I/O setting on the network card and try again. This approach is not as difficult as it sounds because there will only be a few settings to choose from. For example, most network cards only let you select between IRQ3, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12 & 15. Be aware though that IRQ3 is reserved for serial port COM2 and will not be available unless this port is disabled. Similarly, IRQ11 is often claimed by a SCSI card (if one is installed), while other IRQs can be allocated to a sound card. Obviously, the less hardware you have, the less chance there is for a conflict and the greater the chance that the default settings will work. Installing the network So how do you get a network up and running? Well, the procedure is quite routine and you should have no prob- lems pro­vided you install everything in a logical sequence. The proce­dure is as follows: (1) install the network cards and their software drivers; (2) connect the two computers together via a suitable cable; (3) nominate shared resources on one or both computers; and (4) connect to these resources via the network. As an exercise, we recently decided to network a Pentium machine to an old 486 to simulate a typical home situation. And as would be typical of most home installations, two different operating systems were involved. The Pentium machine ran Windows 95, while the old 486 ran Windows for Workgroups version 3.11. By the way, neither plain vanilla Windows 3.1 nor Windows 3.11 support networking. Instead, you must have Windows For Workgroups, so check the operating system first if you intend networking an old machine. Alternatively, Windows 95 comes with full networking capabilities but be wary about installing it on a machine with limited capabilities – particularly if it only has 4Mb of RAM. On the hardware front, we already had a spare SMC8416BT network card, a suitable cable, and the necessary T-connectors and 50Ω terminators. All we needed was a second network card and this was purchased from a local supplier for $50. It was a fairly nondescript unit carrying an INET­906­BT type number and branded ExpertLan. Because the SMC8416BT is a Plug and Play (PnP) device, we chose to install it in the Pentium machine. When we subsequently rebooted, Windows 95 correctly identified the card, automatically assigned resources to it and asked for the Win95 CD-ROM so that it could install the appropriate driver. And that’s all there was to it – our first network card was functioning correctly. Of course, it’s not quite that easy if you don’t have a PnP card. In that case, Windows 95 won’t automatically recognise the new card, so you have to install the driver yourself. You do that by double-clicking the Network icon in Control Panel, then click­ing the Add button (see Fig.4) to bring up the Select Network Component Type dialog box. You then select Adapter and click Add to bring up a list of adapters. After that, you just follow the Setting Up Windows For Workgroups Fig.4 (left): first, double-click the Network Setup icon in the Network group to bring up this dialog box, then click the Networks button. Fig.5 (right): select Install Microsoft Windows Network and click OK. When you return to the dialog box of Fig.4, the Sharing and Drivers buttons will no longer be greyed out. Fig.6 (left): you select the resources that you want to be able to share in this dialog box. Fig.7 (right): click Drivers, then Add Adapter to install a driver for your network card. You can check the resources allocated by clicking the Setup button. Fig.8 (left): the Startup and Password settings can be changed later on by double-clicking the Network icon in Control Panel. Fig.9 (right): this dialog box shows the various options available at start-up. These are the default settings and are typical for a basic network. January 1997  7 Sharing & Connecting In Workgroups Fig.10 (left): you share and/ or connect to network drives (or directories) in Windows for Workgroups using File Manager. Fig.11 (right): clicking the Data directory (for example) and Share As brings up this dialog box. Note the options selected. Fig.12: clicking Connect Network Drive at Fig.10 brings up this dialog box, which shows the computers on the network. Here, drives D: and R: have been shared on the other computer and these can be selected in turn and mapped to a local drive letter. on-screen instructions to install the driver, either from the on-screen list or from the floppy disc supplied with the card. Note that when you set up a network adapter, Windows 95 automatically sets up the other network components (Client, Protocol and Service), so you normal­ly don’t have to worry about these. Just out of curiosity, we decided to take a look at the resources assigned to the SMC network card. As shown in Fig.3, it grabbed IRQ 9 and I/O range 0240-025F. By the way, if a conflict is indicated here, you can use this dialog box to manually reas­sign the settings. The 486 machine with Windows For Workgroups was also straightforward to set up. The INET906 is a software configurable network card and comes with IRQ 5 and I/O port 300H factory defaults. It also comes with a configuration/diagnostics utility on a floppy disc but no drivers were supplied. In our case, we installed the card, then booted to DOS and ran the configuration utility. The default IRQ and port address settings were left as they were but we did select the thin Ethernet (BNC) connector instead of the default 10BASE-T (twisted-pair Ethernet) connector. Actually, we’re not too sure whether this step was really necessary as some cards “auto-detect” the connector that’s being used. Unfortunately, the manual offers no guidance here, which was why we decided to play it safe. In any case, the auto-detect function doesn’t always work with some cards. Finally, we ran the diagnostic routines and these confirmed that the card was functioning correctly – at least up until it is actually connected to the network. Software setup Fig.13: printers are shared and/or connected to in the same manner as directories, except that you use Print Manager. Note that you may have to first enable Print Manager via the Control Panel. 8  Silicon Chip The next step was to boot the old machine and install net­work support and a suitable driver for the INET906BT card. This is done by first double clicking the Network Setup icon in the Network group. When the Network Setup dialog box appears (Fig.4), you click the Networks, Sharing and Drivers buttons in turn to: (a) install network support (Fig.5); (b) enable file and/or printer sharing (Fig.6); and (c) install the network driver (Fig.7). Because no driver was supplied with the INET­ 906BT card, we chose the NE2000 Compatible driver from the list in the Add Network Adapter dialog box. As it turned out, this worked without any problems but note that you can also install your own driver if one is supplied – again, it’s just a matter of following the instructions supplied with the network card. During the driver installation procedure, a dialog box will appear asking you to confirm the IRQ setting. This invariably shows a default IRQ 3 setting and this should be altered if necessary, to agree with the card. After that, it’s simply a matter of clicking OK at the Network Setup dialog box, inserting various discs from the Wind­ows For Workgroups set as requested, and following any other on-screen instructions. During the setup procedure, you will be asked to name the workgroup to which the computer is connected and you can use any name you like here (we chose the name “Sili­con” for our two-computer workgroup). Logon dialog box When it’s finished installing the new software, Windows instructs you to reboot so that the changes can take effect. This brings up a logon dialog box, into which you can enter a logon name and a password (if you need one). You are then prompted to create a password-list file (this lets you automatically logon to resources that require password access). If you want to change the logon name, just type a new name over the default. The usual practice is to name the computer after the person who will be using it. In our case, we named the Pentium machine “Greg” and the 486 “John”. Don’t use passwords unless you really feel it’s necessary. Having to type a password every time you boot Windows or connect to a shared resource can be a real pain. Certainly, you don’t need passwords in a home situation, unless you want to stop children from gaining access to certain files or resources. If you want to be able to boot into Windows with­out logon hassles, leave the password box blank, click yes when prompted to create a password list and then click OK. From then on, Mapping Drives In Windows 95 Fig.14: the easiest way to connect to shared folders or drives in Windows 95 is via Network Neighborhood. Double-clicking the remote computer (John) then shows the shared resources on this computer (in this case the Data folder). Each resource can then be selected and mapped to a local drive letter by clicking File, Map Network Drive in the middle dialog box. Here, the Data folder is being mapped as local drive Z: . the machine will boot into Windows without the logon box appearing. Of course, you can always create or delete a logon password later on if you change your mind. You do that by double-clicking the Network icon in Control Panel to bring up the Microsoft Windows Network dialog box, after which you can change the logon password and set various startup options – see Figs.8 & 9. Running the cable Once the two network cards are up and running, the two computers can be connected together. This involves attaching the T-connectors to the BNC connectors at the back of each computer and then connecting the coaxial cable. A 50Ω terminator is then fitted to the open end of each T-connector. By the way, it’s quite easy to add extra computers into a thin-Ethernet network. All you do is connect the coaxial cable from one computer to the next in daisy-chain fashion. Note, however, that 50Ω terminators must always be fitted to the open-ended T-connectors on the two end computers. Sharing resources At this stage, the network is all wired up but before you can connect to any resources, those resources must first be shared. This is done in Windows For Workgroups using File Manager and Print Manager. Naturally, you can share as many directories as you want, or even share the entire C: drive. However, it’s usually best to keep other network users away from important system files. As an example, let’s say that we want to share a subdirec­tory on drive C: of the 486 machine called “Data”. To do this, you simply boot File Manager, click on the Data subdirectory, and then click Disk, Share As. The dialog box shown in Fig.11 appears and you can select the various options. Note that the Reshare at Startup box has been checked be­cause we wanted the resource to be shared each time the computer is booted. We also set the Access Type to Full so that we could alter files in shared directory. Once the Data directory on the 486 has been shared, the Pentium user (Greg) can connect (map) that directory as a local disc drive. The Pentium user will then have access to that directory and everything in it, including sub­ directories. We’ll show you how to do that shortly. The procedure for connecting to a shared resource on the other computer is equally straightforward. First, you select Connect Network Drive in File January 1997  9 Sharing Resouces In Windows 95 Fig.15: doubleclicking the Network icon in Control Panel brings up this dialog box, from where you can add a network driver, change identification and set log-on options. Clicking the File and Print Sharing button brings up the dialog box shown below. Fig.16: you can share a disc drive (or a folder) by selecting it in My Computer, then clicking File, Sharing. Note that the R: drive has already been shared here, as indicated by the hand holding the drive icon. Printers are shared in exactly the same fashion. Manager to bring up the dialog box shown in Fig.12. This shows all the computers on the network, in this case Greg (Pentium) and John (486). Next, you select the remote computer (Greg) to view its shared resources. As can be seen, drives D: and R: (the CD-ROM drive) on this computer have been and we can select these in turn and map them to local drive letters. We mapped D: to local drive X: and R: to local drive R: on the 486 machine. A similar procedure is used to share and/or connect to network printers, except that you use Print Manager (Fig.13). If Print Manager hasn’t been 10  Silicon Chip enabled, you will have to enable it via the Control Panel. Windows 95 networking As one might expect, networking is even easier with Windows 95. When you install a network card, the Network Neighbourhood icon automatically appears on the desktop. Double clicking this brings up the back dialog box shown in Fig.14 and, if everything is working correctly, you should see all the computers on the network. Double clicking the remote computer (John) shows the shared resources on this machine. In this case, the shared resources are an AST laser printer and the Data directory referred to earlier. The Data directory can now be mapped as a local drive on the Pentium machine by selecting it and clicking File, Map Network Drive, then choosing the drive letter and clicking OK. We chose to map \\John\Data as drive Z (note: the path on a remote comput­er always begins with a double backslash). Alternatively, you can connect (and disconnect) network drives via the icons on the toolbar of Explorer. There are several ways to share folders (or disc drives). One way is via My Computer – you select the folder or drive you want to share, then click the File menu and click Sharing (Fig.16) to bring up the options dialog box. Alternatively, you can right click the resource in Explorer, select Properties from the menu, and click the Sharing tab from there. A printer can be shared in exactly the same manner. If you want to connect to a remote network printer, you can use the Add Printer Wizard via My Computer. The procedure is the same as when connecting to a local printer except that you choose Network Printer when the wizard prompts you during the installa­tion procedure. Alternatively, you can install a printer by double clicking on its icon in Network Neighbourhood. It might all sound a little involved but it’s really much more complicated in the telling than in the doing. In reality, you can share, connect and disconnect resources on a network in a jiffy, using just a few mouse clicks. And that’s true whether you’re using Windows 95 or Windows For Work­ groups. Once you have your basic network up and running, you can experiment with some of the communications features that network­ing offers, such as electronic messaging (Mail and Chat) and remote faxing. You will find all the advice you need in the Microsoft Windows manuals and in the help menus. The manuals also contain a wealth of information on networking in general so be sure to refer to them. Finally, it's best to disable file and printer sharing before removing a machine from a network. If this is not done, the machine can take a long time to boot because it spends time searching for shared resources on a SC non-existent network.