Need to revisit this. Laptop: eMachines 5405 AMD 1ghz, wireless 802.11g. Desktop: not wireless yet, Systemax AMD 2400+ 1.8ghz. They're at the moment connected by plain ol' cable.... and works fine, can access both machines each from the other, run programs etc. Only thing I've never been able to do is access the 'net from one when the other's connected (cr#p 30 year old analog phone lines, dialup is all I have available right now).

I want to put a wireless card etc. in the desktop. I don't know what I need. Before I buy something I want YOU to tell me what I need. I only want to do this once, I don't want to spend a fortune, and if in setting up this network with wireless I can also fix the "no connect" thing 'netwise, that would be great too.

I know I'll need a wireless card. Router? What else?
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No help, huh? I was hoping to get some thoughts etc. by Monday, so I can either order what I need or get it locally if anyone's got it....
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I had a thought on it, but it's outside of my expertise.

To make a network work, so to speak, the network has to think that the modem connection is coming from a standard network port.

There used to be an SMC [ SMC7004ABR ] [one listing: $70]router that had an option to automatically connect to the internet using a serial port plus your own external modem if no other WAN [web] connection was available, but I haven't seen that one for a few years, I assume there was something wrong with it, or it just didn't sell, or something.

Here's an amazon seller, $75 plus review. Can't find much information on it, might be newer routers out there that do the same thing, not sure.

If you look around you can probably get that router for about $40 is my guess. But research it to see if you can find a review of the modem connection, it may not really work.

That would have been a perfect solution for your problem, an always on network connection coming through your router, which your computer would just treat as a standard LAN connection.

That's what I would go for if I were you, but I'm not sure how to do that without that product. You can use one box to get the incoming signal from the modem then using two network interfaces/NICs you could have the box be a router to the rest of the network, but that means you have to leave it on all the time, which is a waste of energy, and it's annoying to use a big box for only that.

Other than that I can't think of anything right off hand, but something may come to me.
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Huh. Well poop. See, there's this friend of a friend, who says he's always been able to have a dialup setup like a broadband setup without any special stuff. But he's out of the country right now so I can't find out what he does/did (he now has satband himself).

He made it sound like "conventional wisdom" about not being able to do this sort of connection on dialup was totally wrong.... Which was why I thought I'd ask you guys.
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windows has built in connection sharing, that's probably what he's talking about is my guess. I used to play with that but it sucks so badly and in so many different ways I've never touched it again. Horrible implementation.

There may be other ways, but this problem is just so obscure that it's going to be hard to find a good answer I think.

Ideally, you would have a network based modem connection, that makes everything a lot easier to deal with, especially if you move to linux.
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Windows-based connection sharing simply doesn't work with dialup (at least mine). I've tried everything I knew how to do (and as long as I've been tweaking machines, that's actually quite a bit....) The only thing I never really got working (tried it though!) was assigning IPs - which after re-reading the emails from the friend-of-a-friend, seems to be something HE did do.

So maybe I'll try that. Eventually. Of course, this all may have more to do with not having a "real" router than anything.... right now I have the q&d cable-between setup.

So could you answer another question for me then: would I maybe be able to do this WITHOUT going wireless? I mean with just the standard normal router and cables thing? That doesn't help when I want to use the laptop out on the deck in the summer though....
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Here's a decent looking tutorial on setting up windows internet connection sharing. It has a section on doing this with Linux though I can't vouch for how good or upto date the information is.

<checked>It's very out of date, anyone who talks about 10 base T connections as an option is coming from around 1996 or so. Ignore all that part, the basics haven't changed much, mainly because I'm sure this technique hasn't changed much, since almost nobody uses it anymore.

The only real thing you'll need is a hub/switch. Not, note, a hub alone. A switch actually directs the traffic to the right box.

Those are very cheap.

I don't believe you'd need a router at all, since the main box, with the modem, will act as a router. I doubt this will work very well if you mix linux and windows, but you never know.

Note: to do wireless, you'll have to add some components, you'll need a wireless router first of all, which could replace the switch. Doesn't matter what router, the cable from your modem server will be the router WAN connection, or a cable from a switch to the router will act like the WAN connection.

This sounds to me like something that is just barely marginally worth even looking into, a lot of work to achieve very little.

Connections to switches tend to be easier to run than direct cable connections between computers, by the way.

You might also need two networking ports on the server box to get this all working well, but maybe not.
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That's the site I started with for networking after I bought the laptop. This is a new article though, looks like - I don't remember it at all. Thought I'd read every one on there! I'll take a look.

It'd be really nice if the guy up the valley just sets up a mini-wireless for us in the valley. Don't know if that's going to happen any time soon though. And since I'm behind a huge ridge of mountain from him, I don't know that I'd have any access anyway *sigh*.
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