>Hi Jim,
>I strongly agree with Ed's ideas about NETBEUI and also agree as Ed said both coax and UTP cabling has 10Mbps speed with 10Mbps hardware.
>I would also say at least use NETBEUI (with or w/o other protocols). MS IPX/SPX is not reliable as Novell IPX and can cause problems. Fortunately if you don't use netware you don't need it (or play multiuser doom, quake etc :).
>I strongly suggest check of cabling. I've managed hundreds meters of coax cables succesfully but once lived a situation that drove me nuts within only 20 meters 4 machine. It was an overheating terminator. Besides 50 Ohm terminating on both sides do grounding of one end. Check on T connections that you have a resistance of about 25 ohms. If you have only two machines you could use UTP cable w/o a HUB too (pin 1 to 3, 2 to 6). 10Mbps HUB costs under 70 for 8 or less.

With pricing on NICs and LAN equipment dropping here in the US, it's almost silly not to go 100Mbps. I'm extremely happy with products from netGear 9Bay Networks) - they have a very reliable 10/100Mbps card (the 310TX) which retails in the US for between $30 and $40 with a great set of drivers (including NetWare 3.11 server drivers if you've got older NetWare servers) and a low-cost line of 100Mbps hubs (the FE104, a 4 port 100Mbps hub runs in the $60-70 range, the 8 port FE108 in the $130 range, and the DS series 10/100 switching hubs, which allow you to mix 10 and 100Mbps connections on a single hub are roughly 1 1/2 times that. They also have the FS series n-way switching hibs which allow for multiple connections.) They've been real champs for us at Weatherhill, and at several of our clients (and here at home, where I switched everything to 100Mbps a few months ago.)

I still prefer the 3COM 3C905B/TX NICs (in the $60 range); I use them here at home, and in most of the machines at Weatherhill except the servers. 3COM was not very cooperative about NetWare 3.12 and 3.20 drivers for the 3C905 NICs, requiring you to go beg Novell for patches and not giving very good tech support. The 310TXs do a fine job in a low traffic environment (they do impose a significantly higher load on the server CPU with server to server transfers using ArcServe's Archive operation (back up our transaction files), but that's an unusual requirement, and it only is visible on the LAN for a minute or so at lunchtime and at 5AM).

I would avoid 3COM's low-cost hubs; I've seen lots of problems at client sites (the OfficeConnect hubs seem to force connections at 10Mbps with some NICs like the Compaq and HP server NICs) and the price/performance ratio just isn't there. They do well in pure 3COM environments, but even there, I've heard about slow performance tracked back to the hubs from friends at both FileNet and Performance Auto. Both organizations are long-time 3COM clients, and their LAN people know what they're doing.

If I were starting from scratch, I'd definitely go with CAT5 wiring and twisted pair, even if I were to use 10Mbps 10BaseT, since the same cable plant can support both 10BaseT and 100BaseTX Ethernet with just hub and NIC changes. I wouldn't spend for CAT6/7 cabling quite yet - Gigabit is still out of reach on a per station basis.

>Before win, use diagnostics on LANcard diskettes to see you have no transmission problem. And for sure check your LANcard base addresses and IRQ match with the ones in Win control panel. Generally changed IRQ is not detected by win and the default is used (ie: your card is configured for 300h IRQ 5 but win uses 300h IRQ 3). And some rare cards having both coax and UTP should be instructed to use thin ethernet.
>Cetin
>
>>Hi John,
>>
>>Another vote on the cable! I'll really have to replace the one and see what happens. Don't think that "seeing" the PC clears the cable as culprit, I take it?
>>
>>The hub is another interesting idea which I shall keep in mind.
>>
>>Cheers and thanks,
>>
>>Jim N
>>
>>>>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!@#@!
>>>>
>>>>Can anyone suggest some course of action to resolve this??
>>>>
>>>>Thanks in advance,
>>>>
>>>>Jim N
>>>
>>>
>>>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.
>>>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.
>>>
>>>
>>>John