94cobra: I have a bad cable that I have been using on the Empeg. It gives me a link light on each end. The Cabletron works with it. How could that cable be bad.

Hooray. It's so nice when it comes down to the simple things. As to "how" I wouldn't stress over it too much. Aside from non-compliant or mis-terminated cables, it doesn't take much for a cable (or a port) to degrade enough to cause a problem like this.

synergy: Glad you found your problem.... Cables CAN give the link indicator lights, but still be wired wrong. You've got four wires that have to work to get a successful connection. Only 2 are required to get a link light.
I'm just curious how the Cabletron "Fixes" this. And for that matter, to refresh something you had said... WHY?


Well, IIRC, you could run 10Base-T over 2-pair Cat 3, and even fast ethernet over 1 version of 2-pair Cat 5, so maybe the Cabletron is more lenient to pre-Cat 5 10Base-T and allowed the maybe-not-wired-to-4-pair-EIA-Cat-5 cable to work where the 3Com wouldn't.

If my cable is bad, I don't want it to work. PERIOD. That means that I can replace it. Having the hub rewire internally is just some crap I don't want.
Agreed with a bullet. I saw another thread here about somebody getting a patch cable wired up at Radio Shack. I have to guess that marginal cables -- and the false economy of building cables in-house to "save money" -- are the cause of more non-productive lost hours of IT support time than, well, lots of stuff. Buy cables from places that make jillions and if they start to seem dubious, throw them away.