I have Charter Pipline, Two PCs, One IP, Ethernet hub, SB3100 Cable modem.

My First (connected unit) PC works fine and uses DHCP services to obtain an IP address from Charter. Im pleased with its performance.

I dont want my second PC to get online at all. Im not interested in ICS, or file sharing (client not installed). I DO WANT Both PCs to Play TCP/IP games though. I installed TCP/IP protocol in second PC and bound it to the NIC. This is enough to play LAN games...which I have done with the PCs in static mode.

I set my First PC to DHCP and my Second PC to static and it all worked well, for a while. The next day however the second PC couldnt find the First PC again.

I set the Second PC with an IP address identical to the First PC, with the exception of the last digit. I used the Same Mask (255.255.254.0) as the First PC. Is this the right approach?

I then checked winipcfg of First PC and learned that the new IP lease was STILL THE SAME IP and Mask numbers...etc....etc. I can only guess that its something to do with the lease expiration or ARP services nixing my local connection. Perhaps Charter sees My Second PC with a static setup, and does something in response?

If all the IP digits in the MASK portion of PC 1 and 2 are the same...dont they communicate via the MAC table for local connections? In other words, dont they talk locally?

Why would I get limited success, and then, the second PC gets lost the next day?

Getting to the Point!....
How would you do this?
One PC has Internet service via Cable/DHCP, and one PC doesnt (and dont want it), but you want the Two PCs to TCP/IP on a LAN basis.

Connected unit...Windows98SE
Un-connected unit....Windows95