Ethernet disconnecting

[Erin Randel]

I am transitioning from my old 8500 to a lovely new ibook. I have the 
two computers networked with an ethernet cable, and I can connect and 
transfer files. But if I work for a while on the 8500 and sort of 
ignore the ibook, the appletalk disconnects, but doesn't tell me. The 
8500's hard drive still shows as being mounted on the ibook desktop, 
but if I double-click it, a little color wheel spins and spins until I 
command-ctrl-restart it. Force quit doesn't even seem to work; I tried 
that several times.

It sometimes tells me the connection has shut down, but i've just been 
wary that the connection has been open a while and sometimes restart 
the ibook just to be on the safe side.

Do you know why this is happening?

Thanks, cheers!

Erin


PS Is there a way to make a delete-forward key on this keyboard? I'm 
hurting with only the delete-previous key.