Ami-PC software and cable cost me £11.00. Its a file transfer facility that I use in the background when I want to transfer stuff from my Amiga to a PC to enable me then to transfer via fast PC network to CD burner on another machine. I burn software from Aminet straight to CD and then take the CD to my Amiga.
Ami-Pc is slow, but it works fine.
If you wanna proper network your gonna have to shell out close to £100. I just visited three sites off the web selling this kind of network. I guess your expecting Ami-PC to work like a hubbed network... well here's the thing It won't so give it up.
Read my earlier posting about using a cheap PC to back up stuff and transfer files from PC to Amiga.
I didn't say XP wouldn't work, I said I don't subscribe to using it cus its internet based and intuitive.