Problem connecting LAN's

Hi all,
I am having a problem maybe someone can help me with.
I am trying to connect 2 LAN’s together. The setup is as follows:
There are 2 rooms, each with 12 pc’s. each room is connected using 2 8port switches connected together by uplink cables. The pc’s have static ip addresses in the 192.168 range. Both rooms are on the same subnet.
The problem I am having is trying to connect the 2 rooms together. I have tried to run a crossover cable between a switch in each room but it doesn’t work. The rooms are about 50Meters apart, but that’s within the range for Ethernet. The “Link” lights on each switch just seem to blink intermittently when I connect them together.
Is it possible to connect switches in this way? As in switch 1 connected to switch 2 by uplink cable, connected to switch 3 by crossover cable, connected to switch 4 by uplink cable?
Do I need to put in a bridge and separate the 2 rooms? Or is it a problem with the distance?
For reference the PC’s are all running Win98.
Thanks for any help.
brooksp

 

This is just a guess, but I suspect you hand built your cross over cable incorrectly.

One 'feature' of Twisted Pair ethernet is that it need pins 1&2 to be a pair and 3&6 to be a pair, in the case of a cross over cable 1 at one end is 3 at the other and 2 at one end is 6 at the other. If you were to wire 1 as 8, 2 as 7, 3 as 6, 4 as 5, you would NOT get the right pairs connected

http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=1106

this FAQ talks about the nitty gritty