I've got a small network of 2 PCs and a Mac. One of the PCs has Win98 and the other win98/Linux dual boot.
When the dual boot PC is in win98, all three talk quite happily via TCP/IP.
However, when the pc is running Linux, I can't see it on the network, it won't even respond to a ping command from the other pc, nor will it ping the other machines.
I have installed Mandrake 8.1. It says I have a 3com card (correct).
I have set up the ip address, subnet mask the same as when running win98.
The control center tells me that the network is running.
So what have I missed??

The reason for all this? Is so I can try to learn about Apache, which seems to be running locally as localhost.localdomain.

Can you ping the NIC itself in Linux? Run ifconfig and post the output.

Also, give us more info about your network's connection scheme.

I also tried to setup internet sharing to see if it made any difference, but alas no.

So, the IP address of linux PC is 192.168.0.1
(the other PC is on 192.168.0.2)

Pinging 192.168.0.1 returns all data, as does 127.0.0.1.
But pinging 192.168.0.2 it can't find the host, timing out.

The network card is 3com 3c900B combo, running from the thin-net coax connector, not the 10baseT connector, simillar for the other PC and the Mac.

All help appreciated.

ifconfig gives:

[root@localhost root]# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50A:4B:E1:52
inet addr:192.168.0.1 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:79 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:79
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:12615 (12.3 Kb)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x1000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:12939 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:12939 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:950752 (928.4 Kb) TX bytes:950752 (928.4 Kb)

ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
inet addr:195.7.235.70 P-t-P:192.168.3.19 Mask:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1524 Metric:1
RX packets:644 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:785 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:3
RX bytes:406028 (396.5 Kb) TX bytes:178126 (173.9 Kb)

[root@localhost root]#