connecting 3 pcs with cross cable

I have PC A which connects to broadband with my adsl ethernet modem.
PC A has 3 NIC.
1 NIC connects to adsl modem, 1 connects to PC B and 1 more empty.

PC B connects to PC A perfectly with cross cable. Meaning PC B could go online without any problem.
PC B has 2 NIC, 1 connects to PC A, and 1 more empty.


Now i have a PC C which is a laptop, which wants to connect to internet as well using cross cable ?
I've tried connecting PC C to PC A, doesnt seem to work ...

Any idea how to make my laptop (PC C) to go online using cross cable ?

I don't have budget for a switch or a hub, so all i wanna know is it possible for PC C a laptop to go online using cross cable ? I would want all 3 PCs to go online.

To tell you the truth, I'm not absolutely sure of how that would work. Maybe try connecting PC B to PC C, and staticly set all of their ips.. 192.168.0.1.. 192.168.0.2.. etc. Also make sure that all of the subnets are the same, now considering your only using 3 computers, go with the 255.255.255.0 subnet address which represents a Class C network. Now, I'm not sure how the 3 computers using crossover cables would work, I just seriously suguest buying a small 4-5 port hub/switch. I just bought a 5 port smart switch on eBay for less than 10 dollars (shipping included). Go online and browse, i'm sure you can find a small hub/switch for cheap that would suit your needs

btw how does a switch / hub work in this senario ?

All the machines plug into the switch/hub with ethernet cables and can all network together. The solution suggested before should work as long all Network cards are configured in the same IP range.

what bout my ethernet modem ? do i still connect using my PC A ? and my PC B and PC C connects to the hub ???

You can buy a 8port switch for $18 including shipping [see url below] or less if you look around so money really shouldn't be the issue.
http://www.3gplaza.com/estore/control/Computer3G/productdetails?id=790

The question really comes down to if you can make multiple nic card bridge connections to the card with the dsl connection. I have not heard of anyone being successful with this.

What you can do, if you have XP on the 2nd box is have two nics in it is use ICS to also act as a bridge. So you would have the dsl come into PCA's nic1 and then go to nic2 to get to PCB's nic1 which will go out nic2 to the laptop.

Each segment needs to be a different ip address range. So you have one ip range going from internet/dsl modem to pcA nic1. You have a different subnet from pca nic2 to pcb nic one. And a different one from pcb nic1 to the laptop. All of these are set by you staticly. This is required so Internet Connection Sharing knows which nic to send the traffic out.

In my home I am currently running one web server, 1 tower and 2 laptops. The webserver has 2 nic cards and is connected to my dsl line with one of them. The other is set up using an internal 192.168 type address with the other nic cards address as the gateway.

I then run from that nic card to a 5-port linksys switch which has the tower and 2 laptops connected to it. Each of these computers has an internal 192.168 addr and uses the addr of the internal nic on the server as its gateway.

This sounds like exactly what you are trying to do. If so, let me know and I will explain more fully how to set it up.