At 10:51 AM 10/26/1999 , you wrote:
>I need to network three computers in our trucking co. office but don't
>know what I should get to do so.  Can someone reccomend, please.


To build a simple network, you will need only a few pieces of
hardware to start.

1) a hub
2) a network card for each computer
3) cables to run from each computer to the hub

The hub
I recommend a hub in this situation, as you are going to buy everything
at once.  Hubs are the basic connector for a network, as a junction for
the computers to connect together. If all the cards are the same speed,
10mb vs 10/100mb cards, buying a simple hub to match their speed is
ideal and most economical.   If the cards pre-exited in the computers and
were mismatched in speed, you should use a switch, a device that allows
the faster cards to continue to communicate at the highest speed and
not slowed by the slower card.  Today, hubs are very inexpensive and
the price of switches has fallen dramatically.  (under $50 for a 5port
hub and under $100 for a 5port switch).

The Network cards
Although you will find older 10mb network cards around in the $15
price range, they are almost always ISA slot cards.  I highly recommend
you use 10/100mb network cards, now in the under $30 range and they
are usually PCI cards, which dramatically increases data transfer
speeds and performance.

The Cabling
Nearly all hubs and Network cards sold today are what is often called
10base-T or 100base-T.  That simply means you use cables called
Cat5 or they have connector ends on them that resemble a telephone
connector.  The telephone connector is actually smaller, called a RJ-11
connector, while a 10base-T connector is an RJ-45.  But, they are
nearly alike, except for size.

All you do is install the network cards into each computer, along with
required drivers for the operating system.  Plug in an appropriate
length cable to the hub, then cables out from the other two computers
to the hub.

Software
The only thing left to do is setup the software to let the computers
communication.  If you are using Windows95 or 98, this is real
simple.   On each computer, go to Start/Settings/Control Panel
and double click on the Network icon.   Click on the tab at the top
that says: "Identification."   In these boxes you distinquish each
computer on the network.  The top box, Computername should
be different on each computer, (for our purposes we will call
each computer one, two and three, respectively).   The Workgroup
must be the same on each computer and you can use anything...
"Workgroup" is default.  The bottom box, computer description is
not really important, but you must have something in the box.

Next, click on the "Configuration" tab at the top.  You will need
to click on the ADD button and then double click on Protocol.
On the right side choose, "Microsoft" and then on the left side
choose "Netbeui."  Now, the network driver has been installed.
Now, click on the button in the middle of the window that says,
"File and Print Sharing."  Click on each one so that a check mark
appears in front of each.  Your network drivers are installed.  Click
the OKAY button.  The computer will want to restart, allow this to
occur by clicking on the Okay button that appeared.

Now, when the computer is restarted, double click on the MY Computer
icon on the desktop.  Right click on the "C" drive icon and click
SHARING.  Check the "Share As" button and check the share type
as: FULL.  Now click on OKAY.  These steps are important on each
computer.  It is the same except for setting the Computer name, which
is different for each computer.

The only thing left is to map the drives on each computer.  This is done
so each computer knows where to find the hard drives on the other systems.
Open Windows Explorer.  Click TOOLS on the upper toolbar, then
map network drive.  In the box provided, in the window listed as
PATH, you need to describe the path to the hard drives on the other
computers.   Say that all computers have been setup now, you only
need to type this in to the computer named "one":  \\two\c
This tells computer ONE that computer TWO  "\\two"  has a hard
drive "C" at  \c  or:   \\two\c

You repeat this on TWO to find the hard drive on ONE, with this
line:   \\one\c    and of course it works the same on THREE.

I hope this helps...  it is only the basic steps to get your network
started.  If you have more questions, post them here and we
will try to help.



                 Bob Wright
        The NOSPIN Group, Inc
http://nospin.com - http://nospin.org

                         PCBUILD's List Owner's:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                       Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>