2 PCs sharing 2 Printers

Hi all,

I'm in the process of setting up a business working from home where there
will be two PCs and 2 printers (1 Epson laser and 1 Epson dot-matrix for
printing multi-part documents)

As much as I've built hundreds of PCs over the years I've absolutely no idea
about networking basics. The PCs both have onboard LAN cards.

Can anyone tell me what I would need and how (just in priciple) has to be
done and I'll explore it further.

Basically, I'm wishing to be able to have the two PCs networked togther so
we can both access and work on the same documents (not at the same time
obviously!) plus both machines be able to use either printer to print.

Can this be done without sprinter witchboxes?

Cheers




Bill D

In article <3fe37a02$0$9393$(E-Mail Removed)>, "Bill
D" (E-Mail Removed) says...
> Hi all,
>
> I'm in the process of setting up a business working from home where there
> will be two PCs and 2 printers (1 Epson laser and 1 Epson dot-matrix for
> printing multi-part documents)
>
> As much as I've built hundreds of PCs over the years I've absolutely no idea
> about networking basics. The PCs both have onboard LAN cards.
>
> Can anyone tell me what I would need and how (just in priciple) has to be
> done and I'll explore it further.
>
> Basically, I'm wishing to be able to have the two PCs networked togther so
> we can both access and work on the same documents (not at the same time
> obviously!) plus both machines be able to use either printer to print.
>
> Can this be done without sprinter witchboxes?
>
Assuming you're using some flavour of Windows, and you're not using ICS:
Connect the two PCs with a Cat5 crossover cable
Make sure TCP/IP is installed on both PCs, assign IP addresses
(192.168.0.1 and 192.168.0.2, netmask 255.255.255.0 are good ones) and
make sure they're both in the same workgroup.
Enable Windows File and Printer Sharing.
Install the printers to one or other of the PCs - probably easiest to
have one on each assuming that they use the parallel port and you only
have one of these on each machine.
On each machine select Sharing from the properties of the printer that's
attached to it, and enable it. Likewise for any folder you wish to
share between machines.
On each PC add the printer from the other PC.
On each PC you may want to create mount points for any folders shared by
the other PC.

"Rob Morley" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) .com...
> In article <3fe37a02$0$9393$(E-Mail Removed)>, "Bill
> D" (E-Mail Removed) says...
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'm in the process of setting up a business working from home where
there
> > will be two PCs and 2 printers (1 Epson laser and 1 Epson dot-matrix for
> > printing multi-part documents)
> >
> > As much as I've built hundreds of PCs over the years I've absolutely no
idea
> > about networking basics. The PCs both have onboard LAN cards.
> >
> > Can anyone tell me what I would need and how (just in priciple) has to
be
> > done and I'll explore it further.
> >
> > Basically, I'm wishing to be able to have the two PCs networked togther
so
> > we can both access and work on the same documents (not at the same time
> > obviously!) plus both machines be able to use either printer to print.
> >
> > Can this be done without sprinter witchboxes?
> >
> Assuming you're using some flavour of Windows, and you're not using ICS:
> Connect the two PCs with a Cat5 crossover cable
> Make sure TCP/IP is installed on both PCs, assign IP addresses
> (192.168.0.1 and 192.168.0.2, netmask 255.255.255.0 are good ones) and
> make sure they're both in the same workgroup.
> Enable Windows File and Printer Sharing.
> Install the printers to one or other of the PCs - probably easiest to
> have one on each assuming that they use the parallel port and you only
> have one of these on each machine.
> On each machine select Sharing from the properties of the printer that's
> attached to it, and enable it. Likewise for any folder you wish to
> share between machines.
> On each PC add the printer from the other PC.
> On each PC you may want to create mount points for any folders shared by
> the other PC.


Fantastic - cheers Rob!!

Much appreciated.

Bill D

In article <3fe42cc5$0$9388$(E-Mail Removed)>, "Bill
D" (E-Mail Removed) says...
>
> "Rob Morley" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
<snip>
> > On each PC you may want to create mount points for any folders shared by
> > the other PC.
In case I wasn't clear, this is "Map Network Drive" in Explorer.