help with home networking

Hi,

Long time no see. I love afterdawn's newlook. Well, let's get down to biznuss. I got a router and two netwok cards. I open my two computers up and install the cards. I plug in the router. I get a ethernet cable and plug one end into the network card and the other end to the #1 slot in the router. I get another ethernet cable and do the same to the other computer and plug it into the #2 slot in the router. I get another ethernet cable and plug one end into my DSL modem and the other in the port on the router that says internet. Nothing happens. I have the drivers installed on both of 'em. I can't play LAN, and I can't get on the internet with either of them. I think the problem might have something to do with the two lights on the back of the cards. The top one is orange and the bottom is green. It's that way with both of them. My computers has the cards listed when I go to device manager. I set one of my comoputers to automatically obtain ip. That one has windows 98 on it. I can't find out how to set my other computer like that, because it has XP and I can't find out how to get there. The instructions said to set it to automatically obtain ip. Once again, I think it has something to do with the lights. The one on top says 100 and the one on the bottom says Link act!? They cards and router are both Linksys.

Thanks,
shivera

 

To set XP to DHCP go to control panel then select network. Right click on the network connection and select properties. Under properties select TCP/IP and then properties and set it to obtain an IP address automatically.
You can type ipconfig /all in a dos window and see your current ip address on the xp machine, and winipcfg /all on the 98 machine. The router should be set to give both an address from the 192.168.0.x range more than likely.