If you plan on buying the hardware you need, 100Mb ethernet cards and hubs are cheap right now. At Best Buy, friday, 10/100 Ethernet card from Linksys was $25. They also sell home networking kits that come with ethernet hub, two cards, and some cable for relatively cheap. Especially considering that''s in today''s dollars.

They should coexist fine. In general, get yourself a hub with at least 4 ports if you can - that way, friends can join you. Put a PCI 10/100 ethernet card in each computer. Do yourself a favour, and get decent molded cat 5 cable - it sucks when cable problems make networking feel hellish. You need 1 straight-through piece of cable for each computer - and they simply plug into the ports on the hub. Setup each computer to have TCP/IP bound to 192.168.1.x (x being the number of the computer, from 1 to 255) and a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and everything should be fine. There are some good tutorials on this around the net in general, email me if you get stuck.

You don''t need to change the OS''s on the computers. 95 and 98 will play happily on the same lan.

If you want to wire yourself on ethernet, you''ll need 3 Ethernet cards with 10BaseT plugs, 3 10BaseT cables (unshielded twisted pair with RJ-45 connectors, probably category 5) and one hub, for a 10BaseT network. Or you can get two 10Base2 cords, 3 Ethernet cards with BNC connectors, and 2 terminating resistors.

I would recommend using a 10BaseT network, it''s a lot easier to setup, though it costs a little more. In that case you''re best off (money wise) by buying a home networking starter kit that has two cards and a hub, as well as an additional card and cable. As I said, before, 100Mb network equipment is cheap right now, but this will still probably run $100 to $120. A full setup in 10Mb will probably be around $80 to $100.

And just remember, hardware, unlike software, can be returned to where you bought it.