Still no success.
Have shortened the cable to 35m, straightened it out however the network is still not accessible.
williamsg, I get a slowly flashing led on the hub port where the "long" cable connects into it. The cable is to the IEEE specs and has been checked for dc continuity.
I'm not sure what to try next. Apparently the hub we're using is a "switch" type which should act as a repeater as far as cable lengths are concerned. However I'm still sure the problem relates to signal attenuation.
Out of interest a fairly short cable length made up using the cat 5 cable I purchased (see earlier post) - about 4m seemed to result in a longer network initial connection delay than the cat 5 cables we had been using between PC's & hub previously.
Fujiflyer