Rich's Tongfamily (Richtong.net add-on)

(More election news avoidance posting, man I had a lot of mystery cables running around the house and it has been a good distraction from paying too much attention to the results. But here are some quick notes if you find that there are just wires hanging around your house. But here is what you need:

1. Fluke Networks MT-8200. Yes it’s expensive at $200 but it is really useful. For one thing you can tone out lines and figure out where things are. This really helped me to trace the wires and figure out what is connected to what. So at last, I know what is connected to what.
2. Cable Map. One of the cool features is that this is not just a toner, but if you can plug your sender unit in and then plug the toner in the back and then you can see each line and what is connected to what. It doesn’t have a display so there are a strange collection of LEDs lighting and beeping to figure it out, but basically if it is working, you should see the lights count up from 1, 2,… 8.

So here is the basic methodology:

1. Use the Fluke to find the wire. These devices are only in general, so one frustration is that you can’t tell exactly which wire it is.
2. Add a RJ-45 jack
3. Then run the cable map to make sure the jack is correct. And also that you have the correct cable in the first place.

Now it may not work still because the connection isn’t enough for high speed transmission. And then when you plug it in, if it doesn’t work, you need another device that actually measures the electrical parameters.