Thanks for all of the suggestions. I'm learning. I'm not all that sure that
I'm learning things I really want to know (like in the years that I did my own
car repairs tearing engines apart and putting them sort of back together again)
...and I'm even less sure that I am making progress.
Last night (when I should have been asleep already, which is likely part of the
problem) I started to write this email. But I decided I should first try to
fix the problem that had cropped up with my backspace and delete keys -- or I
would go mad trying to type anything. While poking around in various Linux
sources for how to do this I stumbled (appropriate word) across some
information which appear to be just what I needed to set up my network -- it
dealt with how to configure the settings in the Win 9x machines for them to
work on a network with Linux/Samba. So off I went -- thinking how I would
happily report back to y'all how I made my setup work. Well, instead I think I
set a record -- even for me -- of re-boots per hour ...and hour ...and hour.
And now I have less working than I did before (before I could at least get the
three machines to ping one another, now I can't) -- even though I've tried very
hard to get my settings back to where they were. Sorry -- not too sorry ;-) --
for the long sob story ...but needed to get it off my chest...
Perhaps if I "simply" try to state what machines I have and what I would like to
do someone could point me in the direction I can go to get there. And I hope
that won't include trips to very warm climates or reading multi-volume works on
networking. (I don't want to be a network systems engineer. I just want to
get my system working so that I can work at what I try to do to earn a living:
writing programs for the web in Perl, PHP, JavaScript, etc.)
So: my setup is a 90 MHz Pentium with Redhat 6.1 and KDE, a 400 MHz Pentium II
with Windows 98, and a 133 MHz Pentium notebook with Windows 95. All three
have modems and network cards. The modem and network card on the notebook are
on the same PC card. The modem on the Pentium II is a dual analog "Shotgun"
modem, the one on the Linux box is an external, serial modem. At one time when
all three machines were using Win 95 they shared files and printers fairly
amicably -- although I had TCP/IP disabled for the network connection on at
least some of them so that it would work for the Internet connection. (By the
way, my ISPs assign dynamic IP addresses. One of them -- ATT -- provides the
addresses of DNS servers which I must set up in my machine(s), the other two --
it's too involved to explain why I'm presently using 3 different ISPs --
assign the DNS addresses dynamically(?) after I've logged on.)
Sorry this is getting very, very long. But...
I want to share files amongst the three machines. I want to be able to use
one printer for the three (it is on the Pentium II). I want to be able to use
the modems for each of the machines from that machine alone -- and I want to be
able to use (preferable the dual analog on the Pentium II) to connect all three
of the machines to the Internet through a common connection when they are
networked together (which of course is not always in the case of the notebook).
Now, while possibly some features of my system are unique, it would seem to me
that there are likely to be thousands of SOHO individuals like myself (doing
all positions from janitor to CEO, including network systems engineer in
between) with setups that are not all that different from mine. I hope very
much there is somewhere some simple, straightforward, short documentation
and/or software package which would enable one to get such a system working
within an hour. (I hesitate to even try to estimate how much time I've
already spent trying to do this. It is quite probable that if I had used that
time to read the 9+ -- really -- books related to either networking or Linux
that are on my desk I would have mastered them all...)
TIA for all advice!
Cheers!
Mike Green
P.S. I think I've fixed the problem with my backspace and delete keys :-)
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