We have three computers. Mine, the main computer, runs 98. We homeschool and our childrens computers are networked to mine for ease of grading assignments, reviewing their work and monitoring their internet access.
My computer is the oldest of the three and, IMHO, not worth upgrading yet again. I would like to purchase a new system, which comes with XP. Can the two existing systems be left with 98 or will I need to purchase XP for theirs also?
What other problems may arise that I’m not aware of?
You’ll be just fine. XP has a handy setup program for networking to Win98 machines. I have 2 PCs on my home Lan, a 1.3Ghz T-Bird runing XP and a P3-500 running 98SE. No problems at all.
I have windows 98, ME, 2000, and XP all networked together at home (why yes I am a geek, why do you ask?), and they all play nice together. There are also a couple of VMS boxes and a linux computer as well, but since these are non-windows operating systems they don’t support microsoft file and printer sharing (well, technically linux does, but I haven’t installed that part yet), so they can only do things like ftp transfers with the windows machines.
I never bothered to use the XP setup programs. The local network runs all with static IP addresses (192.168.0.x, where x is the unique number for each machine). A windows 2000 computer connects to the internet, and has connection sharing enabled, thus allowing all of the other computers to access the internet as well. This type of setup requires two network connections in the internet machine (a windows 2000 system on my network, could be your XP system), one for the internet (can be modem or cable modem or whatever) and one for the local network.
Just make sure that all of the computers can speak the same language, which in my case everything is set up to use TCP/IP (which happens to be the only protocol supported by windows, vms, and linux).
I have two XP machines (one each of Pro and Home editions) attached to a peer network that is largely Win98 machines; it works fine, but I do tend to experience long delays waiting for views to refresh while browsing shared resources on other computers from the XP machines - maybe I need to tweak something?, anyone?
Mangetout, I don’t get any delays. I’ve seen slow transfers like that when one machine is set to full duplex and the other set to half. You end up with a lot of data collisions that slows everything down.
I’ve seen crazy things happen on networks with 98 and NT/2k machines. Delays are one - I never have trouble accessing a share by name, but if I browse to
tmachine, it’ll often ask for a password, or just hang there for a minute before showing the list.
I haven’t seen anything like that happen on XP yet. Perhaps it’s been fixed.
