Hardware/Networking Problem

G'Day all.

I have a problem and it seems to be more hardware than networking, so I'll post it in this board, and if it gets moves so-be-it.

I recently installed a Lynksys PCMCIA card into my father's laptop. I can't remember the model of the Card, and I know my father's laptop is a Toshiba (running windows 98), however at 8:45 in the morning the model number of that too is eluding me.

I installed the card, threw on the drivers (we were missing a couple of the files, but I got them off the web, and everything's good to go now). The card reads fine, so I hooked it up to my cable modem, and it released and renewed an IP address, and it seemed like all was good with the world. So then I take it over to my laptop (Running windows 2k), and use a crossover cable to hook it into my network card. Here's where the problem begins.

It says I don't have a connection. So I try the same cable between my laptop and my desktop (Also running windows 98). Everything works fine. So it's not the cable. So when I plug the cable back into my father's pcmcia card, I get the no connection. Then after a couple of seconds it says connected at 10mbs, but only stays on for a fraction of a second. Then a few seconds later it says connected at 100mbs and disconnects after a second or two. The lights on the dongle of the PCMCIA card flash, but not constantly. But when I hook the card up to a hub, the lights stay on a solid connection is made, and all is well again. The problem just seems to happen when I use a crossover cable to do a direct hookup.

Does anybody know why it is doing what it is, and maybe how to fix it? I don't want to haul out a hub everytime I want to share files, and stuff between two laptops. Any/all help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for listening

Tap

 

Pin-out for a cross-over cable

Are you sure you have a cross-over cable? Some ports will auto-sense and configure to MDI or MDIX depending on what you present.

 

I'm quite positive I do have a x-over cable. I made it myself and have tested it using a few computers.

I did not, however, know that some cards will auto detect. I never thought about using a straight through cable, as this goes aginst everything I know (computer to computer = x-over), but I'll give it a shot.

Thanks