IR or Serial Remote Conections

[mr_dickles]

Hi, I was wondering what experiences folks have had with the serial connection between the tivo and a motorola cable box (I think there a couple of others with this capability) used for changing channels?

I have a S2 SA and have been using the serial cable which was shipped with my tivo to connect to my cable box for quite a few months now. It's been working great (changes channels correctly 100% of the time as opposed to the IR cable which seemed to work 80% of the time).

I recently got the two kernel monte hack running on my machine but in theprocess lost the functionality of my serial control. I have double checked that the cable is still connected (never took it out during my upgrading). And in the system setup, where you choose IR or serial, it tests the cable/connection before you can stay with that selection. And my tivo says the test was unsuccessful for Serial but not IR.

Any one have any suggestions, or experiences with this?

Thanks again for your time.
K.

[alexander00]

I'm having the same problem with my Sony SVR3000 controlling my RCA DRD420. The serial cable is the only way to go because the infrared has not been reliable enough for me.

I did the same hacks that you did with sleeper's scripts and CD. Thanks for the help with the 4.0.1 bug to fix the video problem.


Do you think that the problem is related bash locking up the serial port because it wants to run on that port?


Just like you I telnet into my box so I don't rely on seial bash.

[alexander00]

OK. Here's the deal...

If you want to use the serial home control cable for you S2 SA, running bash then you have to give up serial bash.

I telnet into my box from my network and do everything that way. I made a serial cable out of an old mouse but have never tried it out so this was no big deal for me.


WARNING! Do not do this unless you are willing to lose serial bash capabilities.


You will need to edit rc.sysinit.author and take out the stuff that says that bash runs with the ttyS2 i/o.

Specifically,

1. get a bash prompt (I do 'telnet 192.168.0.8' from a cmd prompt on my Win2k PC)
2. mount -o remount,rw /
3. cd /etc/rc.d
4. vi rc.sysinit.author
(yes, I still remember vi commands from when I was in college back in the dark ages)

You will need to comment out the line that starts bash and put in another line that starts bash.
5. Move down the the line that looks like this
/bin/bash</dev/ttyS2&>/dev/ttyS2&
6. Move to the beginning of the line and hit 'i' to go into insert mode and then type '#'
7. Hit ESC to get out of insert mode and the line should look like
#/bin/bash</dev/ttyS2&>/dev/ttyS2&
8. Move down a line, go into insert mode ('i') and then type another line to make sure that bash still starts.

You new line should look like:
/bin/bash

9. Hit ESC to get out of insert mode
10. Type 'ZZ' to exit vi and save the file
11. Type restart at the command prompt, reconfigure your Tivo to us the serial port and you should be all good.


If you did everything correctly then you should be able to telnet into your box like you did before.

[mr_dickles]

wow! thanks alexander! that was it. I guess it pays to know what's in your sysinit file. ;)

I use telnet also, I have never used bash over serial, and thus didn't even need that line in my file.

thanks again for sharing your solution!
Ken

[alexander00]

You still need some bash line in your file or you won't be able to telnet in anymore, right?

You just don't need to pipe the input and output from and to your serial port.