[QUOTE=Gochen]
My idea is that if I can somehow network them together so that I can control the 1.6Ghz beast via the laptop…
[/QUOTE]
What is it you mainly do on the desktop? Web-surfing? Games? Writing documents? Some applications are better suited to using this kind of set-up then others so it would help if you told us what the machine was for.
[QUOTE=Gochen]
I can get rid of the clunky monitor and excess keyboard.
[/QUOTE]
Whoa, slow down. Don’t be too hasty to chuck 'em just yet. You’ll never know when you might need them!
[QUOTE=Gochen]
Things have been complicated by the fact that they are running on different OS: laptop on MS2000pro and 1.6GHz on XPpro.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, seen that one before! I have to admit I don’t know a lot about networking Windows machines together but different versions of Windows don’t seem to get along together well for some reason.
[QUOTE=Gochen]
I was thinking that maybe I could hook the Inet to the 1.6GHz beast and then on serially to the laptop, but since I am not familiar with such hardware problems, its just a thought.
[/QUOTE]
Serially? Your probably in for an uphill struggle there, go for standard network cards. A crossover cable may be good enough but the natural home for a network is across a hub. Connecting both computers together via a hub is generally the easiest route to getting your network going.
[QUOTE=Gochen]
Also include in your reply what I would have to do if the laptop ran on Linux..coz I would really like to do that…ideally.
[/QUOTE]
OK, now we’re talking! First of all you need to check that your hardware is compatible with Linux but as it’s an old 300MHz machine is very unlikely that it won’t be. Do you have any particular distros in mind? Bearing in mind that your machine is quite slow, this also comes under the heading of “What do you use your comouter for”, you don’t necessarily need one of the more recent cutting-edge releases. If you don’t have one and want to try them out then you can always pick up a “Live CD” quite cheaply which lets you run Linux entirely from a CD without changing anything on your hard-drive. Also Linux Format magazine often include whole distros on their cover DVD. The current issue has Mandrake on it so you may be able to pick this up if it is still available.
Of course, if you already have a CD/DVD and the last paragraph is totally irrelevant then my apologies for being so garrulous. Once you have Linux running then you will need to confugure a Samba server. This ships as standard on most distros, with the possible exception of very small ones that serve a very particular purpose. Next you will need to configure it to be able to talk to the desktop, this is not an easy process but it isn’t necessarily so difficult either. Also there is a very comprehensive guide here plus there is no shortage of help available on various forums, mailing lists, etc. on the 'Net so you should have little difficulty getting the network running provided you are willing to invest a bit time reading the documents and learning how it all works.
But better yet, why not simply take the plunge and convert both machines to penguin-friendly boxes. Again this comes under the heading of “what do you use your computers for.” If the desktop is a glorified games console then maybe not but even here there may be hope! On the other hand, if you are using it mainy as a web-browser, e-mail machine, document editor, etc. then Good God man, your hard-drives are long overdue a re-partition. Linux is designed to do networking and Internetting in its sleep, in fact, Linux practically [B]is[/B] the Internet. Trust me, if you’ve spend enough time trying to set up a network with Windows machines and then try to do the same in Linux you won’t ever look back!
Good luck, let me know how it goes or if you need any more help!