OK, here we go:
Firstly, I wanted my ethercon connector to be mounted on the side, this presents a few problems in itself because of space restrictions and the fact that you need to run the cable from one part of the chassis to another. Also, I'm running to a 1u blanking plate as has been suggested earlier in order to have ethercon at both ends for no other reason than I want to. So after opening it up and checking things out, I found a spot I could put it.
While I was at it, I marked out the holes to cut out on my blanking panel - I marked spots for two XLR panel mount sockets as well, but didnt mount them yet (about to go on tour, dont want more to worry about right now).
While in side, I detached the panel the ethernet socket is attached to and basically just made it accessible to solder. I couldn't get my head around the different protocols of cat5 cabling - Why cant these things just be simple?!!?!!, and so I basically wired it point to point based off what pin would be touching what contact. This worked, but only briefly and would end up with the name timeout error after a few seconds or button presses, no names of patches, IA switches or scene changes were displayed either. I eventually worked out that "B" protocol entailed changing two of the wire positions, so I did that, tested everything and happy days.
The ethercon connectors I bought are a panel mount, pass through style, meaning the only soldering I had to do was on the board inside the MFC itself. This was insanely handy
I used a 3 foot long cat 6 cable inside it and for now, I've had to just cable tie it and use masking tape to try and prevent it from moving around inside too much. I needed that kind of length as mounting to the side of the board means each end of the cable is mounted to a different part of the chassis, potentially causing problems when opening the unit (which I'll try to avoid anyway, but I'll need to re-fix everything once I'm back), this way, theres plenty of room to keep the ends attached and terminated without having to worry about it pulling at anything.
(like I said, it's not pretty, but its functional until I get back and can source some cable tie mounting points and do things properly)
Here's the finished product in action, quite happy with how it all turned out, but as mentioned, I'll get in there and tidy things up once I'm back home long enough to really play with things.
Also, whilst I was in there, I found another RJ45 socket, I got excited for a second, thinking I could just plug one end of the cable into the pass-through ethercon and the other into this, but it's a small, phone style RJ45 - interessted to know what it's purpose is...??
If you have any questions about the mod, I can try and help