>>It sure looks like one of the subsequent installs clobbered a 'working' component with one of "lesser effectiveness", but I have no way to get the system to use components from the original WIN98 CD-ROM!@#@!
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>>Can anyone suggest some course of action to resolve this??
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>>Thanks in advance,
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>>Jim N
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>I'd pull the network cables out, put in cards that use 10 base T (RJ 45 connectors) and a small 4-8 port hub. I'd be willing to bet the coax is what's causing the problem. It's also a 2mb transfer vs. 10 mb on the 10 base -T.

Absolutely incorrect. 10Base2 (Thin Ethernet) uses a signalling rate of 20MHz, for a data rate of 10Mbps; the same as 10BaseT. Even old-style ARCNet achieved better than 2Mbops 9ArcNet was 2.5Mbps by default.) There are advantages to 10BaseT, but raw speed in a small environment without routing and switching is not one of them.

CAT5 cable can support 100Mbps operation with NICs and a hub that support 100Mbps operation; ThinNet is limited to 10Mbps operation.

>I would also recommend you go into control panel, networking and remove all protocols but TCP-IP. Start your first machine at 10.0.0.1 and increment the last octet on subsequent machines. This is a non routable ip address and should work well on your local site. The other protocols are not necessary and only tend to slow your communications.
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>John