Home computer networking question

[tshort]

Anyone out there know how to set up a home network?  My wife and I both have laptops (WinXP) and share a wireless DSL connection, using the ISP's wireless modem (SBC), and it works great.  But now that we're wireless, we can't hit the printer unless we go into my home office and hook up to it.

So I got to thinking about my old desktop system sitting in the attic - Win95, 233 Mhz - just sitting there.  And I am wondering how tricky it would be to establish that as a wired print server, that we could then use to print while we're wireless.  The wireless dsl modem has ports on it to accept a regular lan cable, so I could hook the PC up to it that way (would have to buy and install an ethernet card).  Then hook the printer to the PC.  

But I'm not sure how tricky it would be to get the wireless laptops to hit the pc to use it as a print server.  So if anyone knows of any easy ways to solve that problem, I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks.

[spyderchick]

The reason you can't print to the printer wirelessly is because the printer has no "connection" to the network. If you were to hook the pc box into the system, you can use that as a a third network node. It's not difficult, you just need to get the configurations right. You could call someone local like Milwaukee PC for advice, I'm sure they could help and tell you what hardware to add to the box.

[spyderchick]

Now that  I think of it, there must be a way to add a card to the printer (or maybe there's a printer that has the capability) and you could leave the pc box out of the equation all together.

[Woofentino Pugrossi]

Go to Best buy, compusa or circuit city and look for a PRINT SERVER that either plugs into the router or is wireless (more common now). I have a router that had a print server built in that worked pretty good.

[spyderchick]

There you go... ;)

[Frank_Angel]

You don't need to buy a print server to share the device on your LAN. Assuming you get the desktop connected and your TCP/IP configured properly all you need to do is share the printer. On the desktop that the printer is cabled to (XP instructions), Start, Printers & Faxes, then right-click the icon for the printer, then select Sharing from the pop-up menu. Select Share this Printer and give it a name. Once it's shared you can browse My Network Places on the other PC's on the LAN and connect to the printer. Only restriction is that the desktop must be running to use the printer. Likewise, you can share folders on each PC and then map those on the other PC's to share files.

[Woofentino Pugrossi]

You don't need to buy a print server to share the device on your LAN. Assuming you get the desktop connected and your TCP/IP configured properly all you need to do is share the printer. On the desktop that the printer is cabled to (XP instructions), Start, Printers & Faxes, then right-click the icon for the printer, then select Sharing from the pop-up menu. Select Share this Printer and give it a name. Once it's shared you can browse My Network Places on the other PC's on the LAN and connect to the printer. Only restriction is that the desktop must be running to use the printer. Likewise, you can share folders on each PC and then map those on the other PC's to share files.

Well since he doesnt have a desktop system set up right now (the one he has is Win95 so there might be problems with networking that with XP), a print server might work better if all they use is laptops.

[Frank_Angel]

Sorry, just answering the guy's question. The 95 system will work just as well and will interoperate with XP on the LAN with no problem, Same basic procedure to share the printer. Just have to have File and printer sharing for Microsoft networks installed on the 95 system and enable it for printer sharing.

[Woofentino Pugrossi]

Hell mine is setup like you said here. I never had luck dealing with 95. One reason I'm learning to deal witl linux.  ;D

[tshort]

Hell mine is setup like you said here. I never had luck dealing with 95. One reason I'm learning to deal witl linux.  ;D

Thanks for the input, all.  What I'm trying to do is:

1. use my old decrepit desktop, which is currently running Win95.

2. print from two different laptops, both running WinXP, and connected to the internet via wireless DSL modem/router/hub (it's all in one 2Wire box).

3. Not spend any more money :-)

So maybe I run Linux on the desktop rig?  It's only running at 233 Mhz.  But if Win95 doesn't play well with others, then maybe Linux would be better?  

What I'm figuring is, that since the two laptops are both talking to the wireless modem, maybe I can use that modem as a hub.  then I connect my printer to the desktop pc, and the desktop to the modem, and away we go.  

I think I'm in over my head here...and the modem only has a USB port on the back open - there aren't a bunch of ethernet ports as I first thought.  Back to drawing board.  :-/

[Woofentino Pugrossi]

Ts, I had problems with 95 not working. It might work fine for you.

Linux is somethign thats you REALLY want to work with. Still trying to get my freaking ATI vid card to enable 3D without crashing. Lots of tweaking to do. I tried linux (mandrake 9) before and took 2 weeks of fiddlign to get it to work with a winmodem. I want to learn it. It would be like back in HS when I could program pascal, machine language, cobal, fortran and basic

[Frank_Angel]

Windows 95 will network with XP without a problem. Linux will probably be more work than you want to get into sounding from your level of experience.

To use your 95 desktop you'll have to purchase a wireless NIC for it, purchase a wireless bridge that you can cable it to and connect to your WLAN, or purchase a wireless print server.

If you don't want to spend any money just connect the printer to one of the laptops and share it as I instructed above, then connect to the share from the other laptop. Problem solved.