Jon:
We've been running two PCs on a single connection for about 2 years now, using nothing but "Win Internet Connection Sharing" on an ethernet TCP/IP LAN.

I haven't tried PalTalk, but I think the SO has. Hers is the "Master Machine."

It does require Win98 minimum, at least on the machine with the modem. I made a brief try some time ago, unsuccessfully, when we were both running Win98, but didn't get serious about it until she got her new Win2000.

The thing I learned when I got into it was that, apparently, if you have ever had a direct modem connection on the secondary machine, you have to do a complete manual uninstall of IE, and reinstall, after the primary machine is set up and connected. Apparently, once a machine learns to dial the phone, it has to be lobotomized to make it quit trying.

The manual uninstall means deleting a specific list of about 35 files. Once you've done the deletions, you can do a normal "add software" in Windows to reinstall.

Way back before Win2000, the word on the street was that you could use this ICS setup as long as the PC that "owns" the connection is Win98. A Win95 machine could theoretically tap into the Win98 connection. I can't vouch for that - since I never got mine working back then.

Mickeysoft has an instruction for how to do it, and a batch file to help; but you do have to tweak the batch file to match what's actually on your machine. Took me about 7 hours to get through the procedure, but then I'm slow and I made notes.

Once we got it up, the only problem has been that the cookies and temp files keep loading the hard drive, and the connection gets ratty unless you go in and clean house frequently.

As far as I've been able to determine, you can't have a dialup connection on the secondary machine(s). Can't sell that as a confirmed thing though.

John