# A more professional TurboNET ethernet RJ45 cable option



## krick (Sep 6, 2003)

A long, long time ago, I installed a TurboNET ethernet card in both of my Series1 TiVos, which I still use to this day.

At the time, the only cabling option was to route the cable out through the case somewhere and zip-tie a RJ45 coupler onto the back of the fan grille, which is not very professional looking.

I was surfing the web today for something completely unrelated to TiVo and I came across this cable from the company FrontX.

It comes in different lengths... 6", 1', 2', 3', 6'. I think the 1 foot version would probably be adequate for use in a TiVo, but I haven't measured.

Basically, you could cut a small square hole in the back panel somewhere and mount the FrontX jack, making it look really professional. I good spot would probably be directly above the factory phone jack.

Since I'm anal-retentive with this sort of thing, I'd probably remove all the electronics from inside the TiVo case and get medieval with a drill and some small flat files until I had a perfectly sized square opening for the jack.

http://www.frontx.com/pro/p115.html


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## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

krick said:


> At the time, the only cabling option was to route the cable out through the case somewhere and zip-tie a RJ45 coupler onto the back of the fan grille, which is not very professional looking.


Most people who don't want the cable coming out of the back of the box just cut a square hole in the back of the box and glue one of those cheap plastic ethernet cable couplers into it.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Absolutely you'd remove all the electronics before doing any cutting that creates tiny metal shavings, and you'd make sure that you got all of them cleaned out of the chassis before putting the stuff back.

If the internal modem is well and truly dead you can unsolder the parts specific to it which will let you expand the telephone hole to RJ-45 size and let you mount a jack there.

If you snap out the fan you'll see a keystone-ish shaped hole in the bottom of the chassis through which you can pass an RJ-45 plug and then run the cable up the side of the fan if you don't mind just having it come out the bottom of the chassis.


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

You're only about 7 or 8 years too late for this mod. I used to use a sheet metal nibbler from RatShack and cut a square hole in the back panel of my old S1 DTivos and SA Tivos. I then inserted a keystone jack with a short length of CAT5 cable and an RJ45 connector to complete the connection between the Turbonet and the jack.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

mr.unnatural said:


> You're only about 7 or 8 years too late for this mod. I used to use a sheet metal nibbler from RatShack and cut a square hole in the back panel of my old S1 DTivos and SA Tivos. I then inserted a keystone jack with a short length of CAT5 cable and an RJ45 connector to complete the connection between the Turbonet and the jack.


Sounds like what I did except I used the phone hole and enlarged it with a file and removed the internal modem parts to give the jack clearance.

Couldn't find the jack locally in the color I wanted, though.

Life can be so cruel, sometimes.


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## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

unitron said:


> Couldn't find the jack locally in the color I wanted, though.


To paraphrase Henry Ford: You can have a jack in any color you want as long as it's white or beige.


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

I didn't really care about the color of the jack seeing as how it was on the back of the Tivo and I wouldn't constantly be looking at it.

Time to take my entrenching tool and defoliate my victory garden.


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