Old PowerBook and Dell laptop - crossover cable woes

Got a weird problem.

Wallstreet Powerbook (233mhz, 30g drive, 384 ram, OSX 10.2.8) and Dell
Inspiron 4100 (1.13ghz, 30g drive, 256 ram, XP Home), hooking them up
with a crossover cable, I can get them to barely ping each other, but
with high packet loss - 25 to 75 percent loss.

They can see each other in their respective network setups, and if I set
up the powerbook as a mapped network drive from the XP machine, it tries
to hook up, but fails 90 percent of the time. Same if I try it from the
Powerbook's end. If they do manage to negotiate, the connection fails
anytime you try to transfer a file.

BTW, when these two machines are on my regular hub as clients
(straight-thru ethernet cable), they see each other fine, network and
transfer files beautifully; I even have the Powerbook set up as a mapped
network drive, working as a file server to the Dell. Can get to the XP
machine from the Powerbook no problem. They work normally.

I saw on a show that more modern macs were able to auto-sense when they
needed a crossover cable, and switched themselves so they do not need it
somehow, so on an off chance that OSX gave my Powerbook this ability I
tried a straight-thru cable between the two - no dice. Nothing when I
tried that.

What do you suppose is happening?

Thanks for any help!

 

Possibly a defective crossover cable? They communicate OK with each other when
plugged into a regular network, so the cable is the only difference. If you
need to connect them together outside the confines of your regular network, and
a different crossover cable doesn't resolve the problem, get yourself a cheap
4-port 10/100 hub and connect them together thru the hub.

One other possibility... When connected via crossover cable, how are they
obtaining their IP addresses? Remember, there is not DHCP server to assign IP
addresses in a crossover cable setup. If they do not have fixed IP addresses
and sensible subnet mask when connected via crossover, configure them both with
fixed IP and subnet, and try again... Ben Myers

 

The PB 233 is old enough that it does not have autosensing on the
ethernet port that will always negotiate full/half-duplex connections
properly with more modern ethernet ports. The high packet loss rate
is an usual symptom of mismatch between the two ends of the cable. I
would suggest ssticking with using the hub, that forces both laptop
ethernet ports to the same state. The ability to auto-sense is built
into the port hardware, upgrading the OS will not add capabilities to
older hardware that does not support them.

Joe

 

You could also force 1/2 or full in the settings.

Tom

 

It's not working well. The Wallstreet doesn't know how to auto-sense
squat. Remember, it's not even 100Mb. Use a hub or switch. This isn't
a weird problem; it's just to be expected.