[mythtv-users] controlling cable box

Ray Olszewski ray at comarre.com
Mon Mar 22 13:46:55 EST 2004


At 11:21 AM 3/22/2004 -0600, wwexell at heidewexell.net wrote:
>I have a DTC2xxx as well.  Mine does not have a serial jack in the back,
>but does have what looks like a Cat-5 jack.  Is there a way to use this
>Cat-5 jack for the same purpose, or am I stuck getting a different cable
>box?

Hard to say without seeing the system, but if "what looks like a Cat-5 
jack" is a standard RJ45 jack (and not, say, an RJ11 or an RJ14), they do 
sometimes get used for serial connections (since they have 8 pins, the most 
that commonplace serial connection require). I've even seen RJ14 (6-pin) 
jacks used for serial connections, but not for a long time.

But there is simply no way, other than getting docs for the device or doing 
hands-on experiments (or finding someone who has the same box and has done 
one of these things), to know if the jack is Ethernet, serial, or something 
proprietary.

If it is serial, you'll need to get a pinout for the jack; serial-RJ45 
pinouts are not as standardized as DB-9 or DB-25 (for some info on that, 
lok at URL

         http://www.perle.com/support/cabling/documents/RJ45%20Standard%20Shielded%20Port%20pinout.pdf 
).

  To find these sorts of details, you'll need the actual model number; 
"DCT2xxx" turns up nothing on Google but mailing-list questions like 
yours.  But, for *example*, you can find a DCT 2000 manual (PDF) at URL

         http://www.midcocomm.com/editable_content/guides_and_forms/DCTguide.pdf

Both the 2000 and (apparently, based on this list's traffic) the 2224 have 
DB-9 serial connectors, so I suppose neither of them is your "DCT2xxx".

  And you'll still have to go through the usual hoo-hah involved in getting 
serial connections working ... basically, sorting out the baud rate 
(normally 9600 bps) and getting hold of the serial codes that correspond to 
the command you want to send (no general standard here, but the DCT2000 and 
DCT2224 do seem to use the same command set, and it's documented, at least 
indirectly, by way of the serial-port add-in programs in Myth).





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