Shoutbox

Ok, I just recently bought my friends pc from him and now I want to get it  and my own pc online at the same time.. I'm on a wireless network, but his pc doesn't have a wireless card.. he always hardwired it. So I was wondering since my PC(Main computer) is connected to the wireless network in my house via a wireless card.. Would I be able to connect my PC and the secondary pc with a Ethernet cord. I was told you can do it with a cross over cord.

But A) I don't have one(Or I might just don't know how to tell if my Ethernet cord is a cross over one or not). B)Wan't to know if it's possible with a normal Cat5 Ethernet cord or a Normal Phone jack cord?

The main pc is running Windows XP Professional SP2 and the secondary is running Windows XP Home SP2

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Originally posted by banky
Would I be able to connect my PC and the secondary pc with a Ethernet cord. I was told you can do it with a cross over cord.

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yeap

now, to see if it crossover, take both ends and see the coloured wires, if they are matching it's a normal one, but if towards an end a couple of wires are switched its a crossover...
(pretty crude explanation but it will do )

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Originally posted by Voldemort
now, to see if it crossover, take both ends and see the coloured wires, if they are matching it's a normal one, but if towards an end a couple of wires are switched its a crossover...
(pretty crude explanation but it will do )

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rawr it's a normal lol... any possible way to do it without a crossover?

The reason you need a crossover instead of a straight through ('normal') cable, is that data is sent and received on certain pins. If you use a straight through, both computers will send data on the same pins, and try to receive on the same ones. It won't work.

HOWEVER, a while back, I did connect two PC's using what I'm pretty sure was a straight through, and everything was strangely fine. Could the NIC somehow detect the mixup? I don't know. You won't break anything if you do plug in the wrong cable.

Thanks for the help, I got a cross-over cable and everything seems to be working fine both computers are connected ;D

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Originally posted by MeEtc
HOWEVER, a while back, I did connect two PC's using what I'm pretty sure was a straight through, and everything was strangely fine. Could the NIC somehow detect the mixup?

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Quite possibly...not sure how but I do remember a friend once saying that some ethernet adapters/cards are auto-switching. How true that is I'm not 100% sure.

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Originally posted by MattyRid
not sure how but I do remember a friend once saying that some ethernet adapters/cards are auto-switching. How true that is I'm not 100% sure.

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Most ethernet products less than 2-3 years old have the auto-MDI/MDIX feature. 

When in doubt, just try it and see if you get link lights.  Only one end of the connection needs to be autoswitching to sort things out, so chances of the wrong type of cable working are actually very good these days.