Revenge of the wires.

[wejones]

Some may remember that I posted a picture of the maze of coax and other wires leading into the back of a stack of about 6 or 7 receivers, TIVOs, switches, etc.
Well, in addition to the TVRO equipment, I also have ham radio equipment, and several scanners that I listen to aircraft on, which means that I have several other antenna feedlines coming in from various outside antennas.
I had so many coaxes coming in that I had lost track of which coax was connected to which piece of equipment. So yesterday I started tracking down where all the wires actually went. Traced some scanner and TV antennas coming in through a screened porch into the upstairs of my house, down through the first floor to the basement. Found out that I had the TV antenna going to my scanner, the scanner antenna was going to my wife's FM receiver, and I couldn't figure out just what was going to the ATSC tuner card on my computer. So I put little post-it tags of about 6 different coaxes downstairs, and one at a time, went upstairs and pulled on the coax, then went downstairs to see which post-it moved.
Well one of the coaxes was a bit tight. I thought it was just stuck in the hole through the floor, so I pulled harder. Heard a crash noise downstairs,then heard a "BONG" noise which I recognized as TSREADER losing signal on the FTA channel it was tuned to. Went downstairs, and found out that the coax I had pulled was the LNB line to one of my Fortec receivers, and I had pulled the top 4 boxes off the stack of receivers, which then pulled the passthru to the Twinhan card out. It also pulled one of my network switches off my desk.
Anyway, due to the tangle of wires, the receivers didn't actually fall to the floor, but were caught in the safety net of wires, and were suspended in mid air. Turned out that nothing was hurt, and everything was still working. I guess I'm just lucky that I didn't pull on a wire connected directly to my computer, because that WOULD have done some damage.
Anyway, I eventually found that the wire I had connected to the antenna input on my ATSC card wasn't attached to anything, which explained the poor reception I've been getting since I switched "antennas".

[rainman]

you need to tag the wires Bill so you know what goes to what I don't have the maze that you have but i still tag them with a piece of tape and write the names on them so i don't have to remmeber which one is which.

[elgemcdlf]

If you hit an electrical supply store they sell a little item that dispenses numbers. The rolls of numbers are replaceable. Works wonders for tagging wires. By the way tag both ends

[wejones]

Yeah... the post-it notes didn't last long. I had labeled a couple of the wires with what seems like a lifetime supply of floppy disk labels that I have. These last pretty well, but eventually wear off. Where I used to work, I used to have access to these little quarter sized tags (cardboard ringed with metal) with a string attached. Those were great, but I don't have access to them anymore.