In article <d4c0c3c449.john@xl-cambridge.demon.co.uk>, John Pettigrew
<URL:mailto:john-p@NOT-RELEVANT.innocent.com.INVALID> wrote:
> 
> I believe that I can simply connect the two in peer-to-peer fashion if
> I have network cards in both machines. I don't currently have one
> installed in my RPC, so the first question is: is there any particular
> card I should look for? Apart from the obvious one of matching network
> type, are there any pitfalls in PC network cards?

I know the current taste on these groups is for UTP (10baseT, aka
RJ45) cables and so on, but if you already have some BNC co-ax cables
or you just want a more elegant-looking solution, I would recommend
10base2 which is the coaxial cable version. It might also be cheaper
but that's not 100% clear because it requires you buy network cards
with BNC connectors on them. Where I am (New York) the price
difference is trivial between UTP-only and UTP/BNC combo cards for the
PC.

I use UTP in my office but that's with a load of expensive hubs and 5
different OS's. If you're just looking for a fast mini-LAN then thin
coaxial cable is a good choice. I've never found it to be problematic
and it will be intrinsically faster for a two-machine UTP hubbed
network. At home I've had up to 4 machines networked on a thin coax
network with no problem at all.

> The next problem is working with the 2 machines, which has two
> aspects. The first is ease of access. AIUI, I can use VNC to get a
> similar effect to PCPro, with Windows available within the RO desktop.
> How easy is this to set up, and which of the two RO clients is the
> better?

I don't think you want to do that. And surely you'll want to play the
odd game on that PC? If you've got a switchable monitor, that's a nice
solution, but you'll need either two keyboards and mice, or a
switching box (generally referred to as KVM boxes for Keyboard, Video,
Mouse) and a convertor from Stuart Tyrell for a PS2 mouse to go into
your RiscPC. This is only if you want to share peripherals. At home I
share K,V,M but here in the office I only share K,V and I have two M's.

> The second need is file and device sharing. ...

The combination you mention, LanMan98 + Samba, is probably ideal at the
moment. I find LanMan98 to be really very good and I use it to connect to
Win95, Win98 and Linux shares. I have used Samba a bit with no problems, but
I generally avoid using it for security reasons.

If you haven't upgraded to RISC OS 4 then I would strongly recommend
it so you don't have to worry about uncomfortable and embarassing
filename truncation when you move files. The LanMan98 filetyping (e.g.
a text file copied to the PC will appear as "ReadMe.txt,fff" under
Windows) can be annoying but that is a detail and can be circumvented.

Regards,   Ian.

-- 
Ian Giblin                         ** NOTE: You need to edit my email  **
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