... plug one end of the crossover cable into one PC, the other into the second.
If you would like more details on what a 'crossover' cable is and what differentiates it from a normal networking cable, I'd recommend you go to www.google.com and search for "Crossover Cable" -- this leads you to several DIY guides and an explanation into the differences. Essentially a crossover cable is a network cable with the standard end on one side and pins 1,2,3 and 6 criss-crossed on the other.
If you are running windows and both network cards are in operational order, windows should assign an ARPA/APIPA IP address in the 169.254.x.x range on both machines with an open subnet mask of 255.255.0.0 -- at this point both machines may be able to find eachother however this method is not recommended, it just functions this way by default.
The recommended way would be to set both machines to 192.168.x.x (fill in the X's with numbers such as 192.168.0.1 for PC1 and 192.168.0.2 for PC2) and then connect the cable.
You should now be able to connect to the machines in kind, however you may have trouble seeing the machines by their names. i.e. you may have to use their IP addresses to map to them.
This can usually be solved by going into your TCP/IP properties (in your network connections preferences) and enabling NETBIOS over TCP/IP (under the WINS tab.) You may also want to check the box that says "register this computer in DNS" (in the DNS tab.)
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