I'm setting up my new desk. I had it wired so I have structured wires hidden above the desk in a cabinet and below the desk on a large, closable, cable tray. This way I can hide ALL my cables. The only ones that will be visible are the HDMI for the 24" monitor, USB for the keyboard/mouse, and speaker cables. (BTW, I found a set of used Audiobytes w/ sub. Yeah for me!)

My Mac Mini will be hidden above the desk and I forgot to route USB cables. However, I have more than enough CAT5 cables. On ebay, I bought USB over Ethernet adapters that claim to extend 150'. They don't work w/ even the shortest of CAT5 cables, pretty much DOA.

I'm wondering if anyone here has had luck w/ these and where did you get them? I'll suck it up and pay a little more to get one that works now. I see that Monoprice has 'em too.

If anyone has a firewire suggestion (400 Mbps is enough), that would be good as well.

Firewire doesn't have the same length restrictions that USB does. You can easily run 10m, and then stick a normal Firewire hub at the end of that.

But if you need a repeater to go beyond that:
https://www.1394store.com/eshop/product.asp?dept_id=61&pf_id=1610

Thanks. Sadly, I also did not run Firewire, so I need a balun to run Firewire over CAT5 too.

Oof, those aren't cheap from what I've seen.

https://www.1394store.com/eshop/product.asp?dept_id=61&pf_id=2561

I know. And both ends of where the cable should go are in front of me on the same wall. I'm tempted to sacrifice the dang HDMI cable and use it as a pull cable for USB, FW and maybe another HDMI just in case I tear it.