Direct Cable Connection - XP and Win98???

Fellow Geeks,
I'm in the process of resituating my home network and upgrading a few PCs and decided to just use a Direct Cable Connection in the meantime.
I'm using a Null Modem serial cable and am connecting an XP and a Win98 PC.
I chose the XP as the host and Win98 as the guest. The two OSes setup Direct Cable Connections differently, but I would think they'd be compatable with this type of network.
Niether one sees the other. Unless the cable is bad (I made it myself),is there any tutorials for setting up Direct Cable Connections anyone can post a link for?
I might try a parallel cable(with two male ends) first, just to rule out the cable.
Any advice or links would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
DCO

 

When I used this method a while ago, I used a crossover ethernet cable, not a standard cat5e cable, I think it's RJ45 or something like that...