2nd NIC as a router?

Lots of it depends on your settings, OS and goals.
1. What do you want to do? What are you trying to accomplish?
2. Which Operating System are you running?
3. What kind of network is it? Domain, workgroup, standalone?
4. Is there a hub?

If you are using Win98 Second Edition you can use Internet Connection Sharing. The same goes for Windows ME. Although in my expierence it does'nt work to good, it might work good for you. If you have XP you can do the same. In 2000 you can also do the same

When I need a PC to act as a router by multihoning it, I install Windows 2000 server on it. I then use the "Routing and Remote Access" option in Windows 2000 server to configure the server as a default gateway for my network. Of course to gain security, I install IAS (Internet Acceleration Server). The rest is pretty simple.

If you want a cheap makeshift router using a PC, I suggest you check out the variety of Linux flavors for doing this. Visit www.linux.org and look for what you need. A 486 will suffice in many cases, and the OS is free.

You can also use the ROUTE command and set a route from one NIC to the other as it's default gateway and same in reverse.

Nic1: 10.0.0.1
Nic2: 192.168.0.1

create the following routes

host: 10.0.0.1, gateway: 192.168.0.1 network: 192.168.0.0

host: 192.168.0.1 gateway: 10.0.0.1 network: 10.0.0.0

This is the brute way of doing it but it works well.

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