Cachecard with crossover cable?

[GOODMAP]

Hi All,
I've just installed a cachecard into my UK Tivo (purchased from 9thTee along with the network connectivity kit) and have tried to use a crossover cable to connect my Win XP laptop to it directly rather than using a hub. The LAN connection on the PC will not go Connected regardless of which line speed and duplex setting I set it to.

Has anyone tried using a crossover cable with the cachecard or turbonet card before and if so, does the Tivo need to be rebooted once the cable is physically connected to the PC in order to detect the 'network'? I have assigned a static IP address to the cachecard.

I can still get a BASH prompt via the serial connection so is there anything I can check on the Tivo that may help?

Many Thanks,
Phil.

[mjk]

I've just installed a cachecard into my UK Tivo (purchased from 9thTee along with the network connectivity kit) and have tried to use a crossover cable to connect my Win XP laptop to it directly rather than using a hub. The LAN connection on the PC will not go Connected regardless of which line speed and duplex setting I set it to.
Line speed and duplex setting are serial connection terms. They shouldn't mean anything when you are using a network connection.

Has anyone tried using a crossover cable with the cachecard or turbonet card before and if so, does the Tivo need to be rebooted once the cable is physically connected to the PC in order to detect the 'network'? I have assigned a static IP address to the cachecard.
Have you assigned an address in the same subnet to the network adapter on the PC? If not, they will not communicate.

You need to ensure that the ethernet adapter on your laptop is enabled.

As long as both machines have addresses on the same network they should communicate. A crossover ethernet cable should do the job just fine.


I can still get a BASH prompt via the serial connection so is there anything I can check on the Tivo that may help?
Try "ifconfig -a" which will print out information on all the network connections. It should tell you the address, etc, and status (up or down).

[Rob Nespor Bellis]

Line speed and duplex setting are serial connection terms. They shouldn't mean anything when you are using a network connection.

Hmm, they certainly mean something to me in terms of an Ethernet connection

link speed in this context could be set to 10 or 100 Mb/s
duplex could be set to half or full

When using a crossover cable the duplex ALWAYS needs to be half and I would suggest trying 10Mb/s first and then moving to 100Mb/s if that works ( and you can then fall back if it doesn't )

I am guessing that you are not getting a link light on either the CacheCARD ( if there is one ) or on the PC side of things - until you have a working link there is no point going into IP troubleshooting - start at the physical layer :)

Either the cable is faulty, or it is not a crossover. How to identify a crossover cable? Read the label :) No, but if you look at the two ends and the colour of the wires across them if it is the same colour in the same position on both ends the cable is a straight though, if two of the pairs are swapped it is a crossover.

I would try to get a second crossover cable if possible ( PCWorld carry them for a small cost, ) then check you get a link light.

Rgds,

R.

[mjk]

Hmm, they certainly mean something to me in terms of an Ethernet connection

Entirely true, of course. DIdn't have my thinking head on. As far as I recall I have never had the need to play with these parameters. I would most likely suspect the cable.

One thought, is the cachecard seated correctly? Is it appearing during the boot up process?

[Rob Nespor Bellis]

One thought, is the cachecard seated correctly? Is it appearing during the boot up process?

Another good suggestion. The best way to ensure the CacheCARD is fully seated is to remove the foot underneath the TiVo where the card is ( as it can block it pushing it on fully, ) use something to protect your fingers whilst pushing the connector onto the motherboard as the solder dots can hurt :eek: a credit card ( or similar ) is a common one.

Rgds,

R.

[johala_reewi]

Just a thought. Win XP is running on a laptop so the network connection is probably configured to get an IP address from a DHCP server. This ain't going to happen when you are doing direct connection so you have to manually provide an IP address. Off the top of my head you need to go to control panel > Network connections > Local Area Connection (or whatever appears under LAN). Right mouse click > properties. Click on Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). Click on Properties button. Make sure the radio button to Use the following IP address is clicked and enter a suitable IP address and subnet mask.

[groovyclam]

Even more clarification on IP setting
=========================

Usually home networks use subnets beginning 10.0.0.x or 192.168.0.x

Check what IP your internet router is using on the laptop when connected to the internet.

On the laptop:
Connect to the internet
Open a DOS shell
Type ipconfig -all <HIT RETURN>

Look for the line:

Default Gateway..... x.x.x.x

And note the address IP x.x.x.x after it.

This will give you the subnet to set your laptop's ethernet IP to and also the TiVo Cachecard IP

For example, we will say your default gateway was reported as 10.0.0.7, which means all the IP's you set must now start 10.0.0. followed by another number between 1 and 255 which is unique for your network ( so you can't use 7 now ).

Also note the line reported from the ipconfig

IP address........ x.x.x.x

This is the address assigned to the network port that your laptop uses to talk to your internet router ( probably a wireless card or inbuilt wireless device in the laptop ). It should also start with the same subnet but will not have the same last digit as the router IP reported above. This last digit can also not be use.

So now you know which subnet to allocate and also which two last digits you *can't* allocate.

Use the Control panel to pull up the Network Connections on your laptop and right click the Ethernet port and edit the TCP/IP properties to give it a manually allocated IP of the subnet you found out above with a different last digit.

In default gateway put your internet router's IP address you found out at the start of this proceedure.

OK everything. You should probably then reboot. Check you can still connect to the internet via your wireless router.

Now re-run the cachecard config and give the TiVo an IP of the correct subnet but with a unique last digit. Also for default gateway put your internet router's IP.

Reboot the TiVo.

Everything should work now.

[tray]

Hi,

I know pretty much nothing about networking I asked the same question about using a twisted cable & was told that it was just easier to use a router. Well I bought a Lynksys54G ( to give wireless in the future if i need it) and had the whole thing running in about 10 mins I'm also running XP.

Good luck

[GOODMAP]

Thanks for all the input.

I'm not a complete novice with reqards to network comms (have worked for IBM in iSeries comms technical support for circa 10 years) and am using a proven crossover cable and ethernet port on my work laptop.

The cachecard is properly seated and does report in on the bootup process where it loads the database etc. I don't think the cachecard has a link light but I'd have to take the tivo case off again to look - the Windows XP network connection fails to go active (reports media disconnected) implying that it has detected no network.

I didn't try half duplex I must admit so will try setting my laptop ethernet adapter to half duplex and 10Mbps. What I was wondering is whether the cachecard would need to be connected to the laptop via crossover cable at bootup time for it to go 'link active' or UP, or would Linux detect the connection becoming available after booting?

I am waiting to get an ethernet hub back from a colleague who has been borrowing it so that I can also try connecting both machines to it and retesting. I'm happy that the TCP/IP config is correct on both machines but at the moment it is definitely a link layer issue I'm troubleshooting.

Thanks Again,
I'll let you know how I progress.

[groovyclam]

Is the TiVo on a different subnet to the internet router ?

i.e. the laptop wireless device IP is a different subnet number to laptop ethernet IP ?

If so, you will have to do an easy registry hack to fix XP to route between subnets inside XP's TCP/IP.

Go into the registry at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip \Parameters

And change the value of "IPEnableRouter" from 0 to 1

Reboot the laptop.

( If nervous read about it here: http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/w2kprout.html )





My setup is:


ISP Router IP 192.168.0.253
|
|
PC wireless device IP 192.168.0.110 default gateway 192.168.0.253 ( i.e. my ISP router )
PC ethernet device IP 192.168.1.111 default gateway left blank
|
|
TiVo IP 192.168.1.250 gateway 192.168.1.111 ( i.e. the PC ethernet port )


( once the cachecard software has been installed on the TiVo you can easy alter TiVo's IP and gateway by editing the file /etc/rc.d/rc.net with the joe editor and rebooting the TiVo - make a backup copy of the rc.net file first! )

[groovyclam]

Instead of setting up as two different subnets as above, you could bridge the ethernet port and wireless device on the laptop by selecting both in "Network Connections", right-click and choose "Create Bride"

After they are bridged right-click the bridge icon and set it's IP to be something that works with your Internet wireless router's subnet and the default gateway to be the router's IP itself.

On the TiVo, edit rc.net file to give the TiVo an IP on the same subnet as the internet router ( but not the same as the network bridge's IP, obviously ) and make the gateway the same as the Internet router's IP.

Reboot the laptop - check that the software bridge is still bridging *both* the ethernet port and wireless device after the reboot ( sometimes this fails after a reboot )

Check internet access still works on the laptop.

Reboot your TiVo - try a test dial-in - it should work.

[groovyclam]

One final tip - disable all firewalls on the laptop temporarily whilst trying to set this up.

Of course once it is working - renable immediately and try another dial-in test on the TiVo to see if you need to do some firewall configuration.

[groovyclam]

If neither of the above two network config approaches work, then I would say the problem could only be one ( or more ) of the following ( since I have used both the above network configs with my TiVo successfully ):

a) you have duff ethernet port in the laptop - can you check with some other equipment ?
b) you have a duff ethernet crossover cable - ditto for check ?
c) You have a duff cachecard - not so easy to check
d) the cachecard driver software is not installed / not configured properly - reinstall it to be sure

[pipkato]

In case it helps, the current CacheCard has Power, Link, and Cache LEDs on the edge just below the RAM socket.

[GOODMAP]

Well.. for those interested.... When I plugged the cachecard and the laptop into a 10Mb hub they could see each other no problem at all.

I'm going to try the crossover cable again when it is directly plugged into the cachecard RJ45 socket rather than via an RJ45 coupler (that comes with the 9th Tee network connecting kit) to see if this is any more successful.

Cheers.