Ok, what!? Crossover and Straight through question!

DaSilva

Ok, so today, I find I have a spare network card in a press, I decide I will put it in a pc, and share the dsl connection then to another pc.

Anyway, I check up the web, and find out Ill need to make a cross-over cable in order to connect the two PC's. Fine no problem, well kindof..

I find out first I dont have any Cat-5, but I do have some wierd cable with 10 wires inside and 2 fabric type wires, this should do i think to myself

I go about picking out which wires ill use and cutting them ect, then I slide them into the RJ45 jacks I have, swap wires 1 & 3 and 2 & 6 on one end (or whatever it was I checked on the web which ones to switch and i did it according to that).

Now comes the crimping haha..

"Da? Do we have a crimper?", "Yeah", "For RJ45?", "Ehh no", "****"

"Just use a small flat head screwdriver and a light hammer and knock the copper contacts in"

So I begin my manual crimping, heh, I tought my eyes would fall out after a while of this..



Anyway, I finally complete the bloody cowboy attempt at a crossover cable, and plug it in, nothin happens, the little indicator in the system tray still reads "Network cable unplugged".

I suppose I figured I would mess it up.

But not to put myself totaly down, I get a multimeter out to test which part of the cable I did do right, if any!

Turns out I got every single part ok, all the connections, like from pin-1 to pin-3 on the other cable, low resistance measured. Basically my McGyver shoddy crossover cable wasnt that shoddy after all, it was infact perfect.

So I was a bit stumped, I then decide to take out my straight through cable from the press to see if this will work, (I know I know, why didnt I make the crossover from this? Luckily I didnt it turns out) And it feckin does work, pcs are connected fine, so I figured it must actually be a crossover cable, so I get my multimeter back out and test pin-1 to pin-1 through pin-8 to pin-8 on the opposite ends, and low resistance back for each, so it is a feckin straight through cable!

And it works!

So my crossover didnt work, and my straight through did, help, what is going on?

Shanegggg

Ha ha. Tried this before aswell. Was having a big xbox sesion and we brought the wrong cable. Rather then going back to get the other1 we tried a little crossing over ourselves. Needless to say it didn't work at all and we had to get the crossover.

Instead of clamping (like i have one anyway ) i cut off the insulating in the middle and got at the little ones that way. Switched the wires around (Like i had i clue what i was doing ) sello-taped them back together but didn't work.

Shane™

DaSilva wrote:

I find I have a spare network card in a press

Wow, sounds like this is a "crossover network card" if there is such a thing. How much do you know about this card? it sounds very strange.

DaSilva

Shane&#8482 wrote:

Wow, sounds like this is a "crossover network card" if there is such a thing. How much do you know about this card? it sounds very strange.

Actually the network cards im using are onboard ones, the one I found in the press is the one going to the router.

The ones im using though are...

Broadcom 440x 10/100

And the other one is off the top of my head, a Intel Pro 10/100 Ethernet

Its the onboard card that came with the free PC intel gave their employees, maybe you worked there when they gave em out, if so its the same as yours.
your location says "in tel" so I just assumed you meant intel :P

matt-dublin

its possible that there's a hardware setting on one of the cards to automatically detect wether its a crossover...

its possible you switched the wrong pairs etc etc and it could not detect it corectly...

generally its: (numbers represent cables)

1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8

goes to

3|6|1|4|5|2|7|8

Capt'n Midnight

DaSilva wrote:

I go about picking out which wires ill use and cutting them ect, then I slide them into the RJ45 jacks I have, swap wires 1 & 3 and 2 & 6 on one end

Green to Orange ,
White/Green to White/Orange

Yer man on the for sale forum can post you one..
try it both ways around to see which ends the lights on the network card light up

or get a packet sniffer like windump and see if you can see the pings
had a dogy NIC once - would recieve packets but would not send
try ARP -a at the dos prompt - sometimes if one pair work you see stuff

diarmo

Hahahaha............

What a pack of cowboys.
Just get yourself a RJ11/45 crimper as you'll end up using it very often if you have any interest in networking.

568A/568B are the 2 standards used and a straight through would have the same setup on both sides while a crossover cable would have 568A on one side and 568B on the other.

Screwdriver and vice...tried that a couple of years ago....but got a crimper soon after that.

galwaydude18

Ah here we go here is the link http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=219447&page=1

I have sent you a PM about this issue!

galwaydude18

iv tried that screwdriver trick before and I tell ya its a pain in the ass! I gave up after about 2 cables and went up to my computer parts supplier who is a very good friend of mine and borrowed his crimper! I then bought my own crimper and cable tester off him! I was the best €100 I spent in a long time! Such valuable networking equipment to have!

Stephen

Sounds like the network card has auto-MDI/X - i.e. it can detect what kind of cable is connected to it and work accordingly.

matt-dublin

you can buy crimpers in radionics for €49 rj11 and rj45 with a wire strippers,
i have one!!

http://www.radionics.ie/cgi-bin/bv/browse/Module.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0219071098.1112188746@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccdaddeegfjmmfcfngcfkmdgkldfhl.0&cacheID=ieie&3289641645=3289641645&stockNo=3012450

galwaydude18

Thats very expensive! I only paid €20 for mine!

matt-dublin

lol...

i didn't pay for it!!!

lol

Snowbat

As to why your homemade cable doesn't work, it is quite possible that this 10 core cable is just unsuitable for 10BaseT or 100BaseTX transmission. Cat5 cable uses twisted pairs of 100 Ohms characteristic impedence for a reason.

galwaydude18

A 10 core cable is not network cable! Network cable is 8 core! 4 pairs of wires!