Thanks aguiRe for the suggestions but unfortunately neither worked. (actually, I couldn't find a Loopback for W98SE but I tried something called virtual networking). I ended up following most of the steps in this article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;288133
I think the cure was deleting the Winsock2 registry key and removing and reinstalling the TCP/IP and Dial Up Adapter (which had previously been there.) I also extracted the winsock.dll and Wsock32,dll from the cab files on the CD. My other machine which had DSL internet once ran into a Winsock2 problem after I installed and removed iMesh. I recall that the Sympatico support tech walked me through something that seemed very similar to this.
Don't know how this crap got corrupted in the first place but at least I can now play some Q2 while I'm away from my main box.
aguiRe - Thanks for helping me in many ways. I'm still cleaning up my map but I'm away from that machine for awhile. Too bad since I'd like to do some more editing over the holidays.