[Gmdfunk]

I have a HP laptop that I bought for almost nothing because it had a broken LCD. (DV4-1540us) I chopped it up and have put the internals of this laptop inside of the enclosure for an old TiVo 2. I have the tivo 2 case fan positioned such that it is pulling hot air from off the laptop heat sink. It is running at a slow speed by pulling 5v from a USB port on the mobo. Everything works great, temps are down, but the daughter board from the laptop wont reach to the IR window on the tivo, so I am having trouble getting IR reception.

The tivo has a photodiode ideally placed for optimal reception. Would it work without damaging components to solder the photodiode on the tivo in parallel with the photodiode on the laptop, such that the signal would flow from the TiVo photodiode to the computer and allow me to control it with the remote?

Here is a picture of the photodiode on the laptop. it has 3 poles but as best I can determine, the center pole is just a mechanical connection.

Here is a picture of the photodiode on the Tivo. It is the black component n the board. it also has 3 poles but this board is easy to see that the center pole is only a mechanical connection(holding it up to the light shows all traces and the center is not connected to any)

can it be as simple as connecting them in parallel and it would work?

[Matt Devo]

I wouldn't connect them in parallel, I'd desolder the one on the laptop board and just run wires from the Tivo one to the laptop

[Gmdfunk]

I think that I will try that. I'm not sure of polarity so I will just connect them assuming the same polarity as the laptop mobo, and if it powers on from the remote, I'm good. I'm just a little nervous about messing with it. such small components.