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consider a cheap 10/100 switch or even an ancient 10Mb/s-only hub if you have it in some junk heap (with 'ordinary' cables, of course).

Here's a cheap one that has "auto-crossover" support.

For $12! I still somehow think it is not fair that a thing like this costs less than a decent lunch

I am sooo old, and will never stop living in deep past, when professional Ethernet installations where done with 10BASE-5 and 'vampire' connectors, this new questionable 10BASE-T used something called 'hubs' (several $k), switches did not exist and routers were more expensive than good cars.

Rob, you have missed a fascinating era of $8k CD burners and, before that, bootstrap loaders entered via front panel switches