I am trying to connect my linux pc with my window98 pc via null modem serial cable. I have had a go at a HOWTO document but am having little success. Can anyone suggest where I am going wrong, or what I can do to resolve the problem?

I am confident I have the right COM ports (COM2 on Win pc and ttyS0 (COM1) on linux.

I have created a file 'connect.chat' with:

TIMEOUT 3600
CLIENT CLIENTSERVER\c

I have also created an 'options.ttyS0' file. When I run pppd with 'dryrun' options I get:

[root@localhost ppp]# pppd /dev/ttyS0 nodetach dryrun
pppd options in effect:
nodetach # (from command line)
dryrun # (from command line)
noauth # (from /etc/ppp/options.ttyS0)
/dev/ttyS0 # (from command line)
115200 # (from /etc/ppp/options.ttyS0)
lock # (from /etc/ppp/options.ttyS0)
connect chat -v -f /etc/ppp/connect.chat # (from /etc/ppp/options.ttyS0)
crtscts # (from /etc/ppp/options.ttyS0)
local # (from /etc/ppp/options.ttyS0)
asyncmap 0 # (from /etc/ppp/options.ttyS0)
silent # (from /etc/ppp/options.ttyS0)
192.168.0.1:192.168.0.2 # (from /etc/ppp/options.ttyS0)
[root@localhost ppp]#

When I do it without 'dryrun' it seems to hang and the prompt does not come back, however a process does seem to be running. As you can expect the windows machine fails to connect to the linux one.

The HOWTO suggests using ping to see if the connection is there, but I don't understand what IP address to ping? Any ideas?
Thanks