In answer to your questions :
1. Yes, all stautus light indicate OKAY on the Cards and on the Switch.

2.No i havent tried board diagnostics....dont think i have any!

3. I Havent tried anything but Auto...so i will give it a shot!

4. IP...what difference does it make? i have used about 5 diffrent strings of IP on each of the computers...nothing makes a difference...they are now..in fact...set to 192.168.0.*

5. i was pinging by IP address
Where is this HOSTS file....i havent editied as yet!

Thanks for your help....i hope you can give me some more :-)

(btw i just upgraded to the dual Supermicro P6DGS (not that that has any relevance!)

FWIW, 192.168.0.* is the reserved class C address range I was always taught to use for non-internet LANs.

Anyway. I assume that all 3 machines have the same subnet mask (255.255.255.0) and the same default gateway.

Have you tried the W2K box in a different port on the switch - in case you've plugged into the uplink by mistake? Have you tried rebooting the switch with all three machines powered up?

Also, just for a laugh - try installing NetBEUI on all three boxes. It is a very trivial-to-setup stack as it only requires each machine has a name and is in the same workgroup, but should prove connectivity between all three boxes...

HOSTS is a text file that is used by TCP/IP if DNS isn't available. It contains the IP address of each machine, along with it's name. For everything to work, though, this file must be on every machine on the network - hence for more than 5 boxes you use DNS.

Let me know how you get on, and I'll keep thinking...

ahhh, Default gateway...well all three boxes are using NO gateway beacause i never had to use one in the past...and i dont know much about it. What would the gateway be????

btw, i tried all your other suggestions...no luck...and when i ran Netbeui on win2K...the network was totally ****ed up (pardon my french)...every time i tried to access the Comps Near Me...it would Not Respond.

Where do i put the hosts file on the win98 machines...??? Do i have do include the IP address of the pooter the host file is on?

Thanks for your help....hopefully we can nail it soon :-)

Right then. For default gateway, pick an arbitrary machine on the network (192.168.0.1), and set it to that.

Use the "file search" under W9x to find the HOSTS file - it will be somewhere under the C:\Windows directory.

The HOSTS file should be the same for each machine - it should include entries for all the machines on the local net.

Silly question time - does the "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)" entry in the LAN Connection Properties page under W2K have a tick next to it indicating it's enabled?