Getting Started

[slickricks]

Greetings,

Listen, I am looking for someone in the Albany, NY area to tell me what the crap to do to get my Tivo all hacked up.

This may sound strange but, I don't have loads of time to sift through piles of cryptic posts to get this bit of useful knowledge.

I would be willing to pay someone a couple bucks to give me a simple straight forward answer.

Thanks.

[necromancer]

look up sleeper tivoscripts iso.here is the link:
http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28921
there will be one main stickied thread.
run his iso... it is simple and works like a charm..... EVEN I COULD DO IT!!!! that means it's ***** proof
he tells you step by step what to do....
download the file (from thread) and read the first page of posts.... that should aleviate most of your questions before they happen.

I was nervous and had many questions UNTIL i actually ran the iso.. it couldn't be ANY easier to hack a tivo

[slickricks]

Ok, thanks for the reply and for the link.

Let me see if I have this right so far. (Please understand that I make my living as a musician teaching private lessons. My world revolves around modes, scales, rudiments, aural training, complex music theory, etc. I get a bit bewildered when things get complicated when dealing with PC junk.)

My plan thus far is;

1. Get myself a new hard drive.
2. Extract the Tivo 40g drive out of my Samsung SIR-S4040R Direct Tivo.
3. Put the new drive into my spare (junk) PII 266 MHz w/ 320meg of ram as the Primary Master.
4. Put the Tivo drive in the PII as the Secondary Master
5. Put the CD rom as the Primary Slave.
6. Then I can take the burned CD from sleeper, stick it in the CD drive, turn on machine and it will magically boot from the CD. (?)
7. Then when it boots I can run the Backup script. (Will this back up all the data that is currently on my Tivo drive?)
8. Take out the new drive and put it in the Tivo and see if it works.
9. If it does work, remove it and put it back in the machine only this time as the secondary master.
10. Put the Tivo drive in a safe place.
11. Get another new drive and put that as the Primary Master.
12. Run backup, then reboot, skip restore phase, and continue with the Surgery, and Final Phases.
13. Take the newest drive and stick that in the Tivo and see if it works.


Is this all correct? This is what I have surmised from the link you sent me.

[PlainBill]

Ok, thanks for the reply and for the link.

Let me see if I have this right so far. (Please understand that I make my living as a musician teaching private lessons. My world revolves around modes, scales, rudiments, aural training, complex music theory, etc. I get a bit bewildered when things get complicated when dealing with PC junk.)

My plan thus far is;

1. Get myself a new hard drive.
2. Extract the Tivo 40g drive out of my Samsung SIR-S4040R Direct Tivo.
3. Put the new drive into my spare (junk) PII 266 MHz w/ 320meg of ram as the Primary Master.
4. Put the Tivo drive in the PII as the Secondary Master
5. Put the CD rom as the Primary Slave.
6. Then I can take the burned CD from sleeper, stick it in the CD drive, turn on machine and it will magically boot from the CD. (?)
7. Then when it boots I can run the Backup script. (Will this back up all the data that is currently on my Tivo drive?)
8. Take out the new drive and put it in the Tivo and see if it works.
9. If it does work, remove it and put it back in the machine only this time as the secondary master.
10. Put the Tivo drive in a safe place.
11. Get another new drive and put that as the Primary Master.
12. Run backup, then reboot, skip restore phase, and continue with the Surgery, and Final Phases.
13. Take the newest drive and stick that in the Tivo and see if it works.


Is this all correct? This is what I have surmised from the link you sent me.


You seem to have made a fairly common mistake. Step 3 is wrong - you do NOT put the new drive in as primary master. TiVoScripts (the CD, Sleeper's ISO) creates a backup file (200-300 Meg) on your computer's main hard drive.

6. Correct. You may have to go into CMOS setup and change your boot sequence - you want the computer to try to boot from the CD first.

7. Your recordings will NOT be backed up. They will stay on the original drive.

8 - 11. No, now you remove the original TiVo drive, put it in safe place, etc and hook up the new drive as secondary master.

12. Now you run restore phase, followed by Surgery and Hacks.

13. Correct.

If your drive does NOT work, then you can go back to step 8 (hook up new drive), and run restore again. This time do NOT run surgery and hacks yet. Take the drive and test it in your TiVo. If it works, then run Surgery, test again, then run hacks.

PlainBill

[necromancer]

undefinedOk, thanks for the reply and for the link.

Let me see if I have this right so far. (Please understand that I make my living as a musician teaching private lessons. My world revolves around modes, scales, rudiments, aural training, complex music theory, etc. I get a bit bewildered when things get complicated when dealing with PC junk.)

My plan thus far is;

1. Get myself a new hard drive. Good Idea. i used seagate 160gb that was on sale last week


2. Extract the Tivo 40g drive out of my Samsung SIR-S4040R Direct Tivo.Correct

3. Put the new drive into my spare (junk) PII 266 MHz w/ 320meg of ram as the Primary Master.
No. the primary master must be a harddrive with a fat32 partition (your normal windows drive probably). The new drive will go onto the secondary master position AFTER the backup is done of the origional. Sleeper will prompt you to shut down your computer and switch drives.

4. Put the Tivo drive in the PII as the Secondary Master
5. Put the CD rom as the Primary Slave
6. Then I can take the burned CD from sleeper, stick it in the CD drive, turn on machine and it will magically boot from the CD. (?).Correct. If the script doesn't start running right away with a menu about prom, monte, reseting, and shuting down, and all you have is a normal unix prompt, re-burn the CD. Mine didn't work in Nero but I used winiso to make the iso a Bin+cue file... used CDRwin and it worked like a charm. Not everyone has had this problem though

7. Then when it boots I can run the Backup script. (Will this back up all the data that is currently on my Tivo drive?)

This will back up the System of the origional Drive. This is in case hacking goes wrong or something you have an image to restore to.
8. Take out the new drive and put it in the Tivo and see if it works.

The new drive will have nothing on it yet (and should not be connected)...

9. If it does work, remove it and put it back in the machine only this time as the secondary master.
This will have to be done now. connect the new drive as secondary master and boot back up.... the CD will then do the RESTORATION phase... this puts the contents from the origional drive on the new one...expands to fill the space..... THEN you can test

10. Put the Tivo drive in a safe place. YES.... very good idea

11. Get another new drive and put that as the Primary Master
12. Run backup, then reboot, skip restore phase, and continue with the Surgery, and Final Phases..
There is no need. Use the new drive you already have.... hook it back up as secondary master and run the Surgery, and Final Phases. I tested between each one, but that is not required.

13. Take the newest drive and stick that in the Tivo and see if it works.
Yes... stick it in the tivo and enjoy the hacked drive goodness

Is this all correct? This is what I have surmised from the link you sent me.
Mostly correct I made some comments in red throughout. You need three drives total... but only 1 of them need be new. 1 is you tivo's HD.. one is already the computers, and 1 is the new drive. I'm assuming the p2 has win98 on it. the backup will probably only take 100-200mb, but you may want to make sure there is about 1gb free just in case.

[necromancer]

I took so long to make that post somebody else replied :p

[PlainBill]

I took so long to make that post somebody else replied :p

Yes, but you did a better job. IMHO Sleeper should put a version of your post as one of the first posts in the support thread. It would prevent a lot of mistakes.

Extend your right arm straight up. Rotate it so the palm is facing back. Now bend your elbow and give yourself a pat on the back.

PlainBill

[necromancer]

Yes, but you did a better job. IMHO Sleeper should put a version of your post as one of the first posts in the support thread. It would prevent a lot of mistakes.

Extend your right arm straight up. Rotate it so the palm is facing back. Now bend your elbow and give yourself a pat on the back.

PlainBill

well thanks. I only know it so well because I did it for the first time yesturday around 9pm :)

[yensidek]

I probably am overlooking something VERY simple, but work's
got me so befuddled now that I can't play like I want :confused: !!

I tried a couple of different machines and got the same result. I
put my 40 gig drive from the SD-DVR40 into a 300 Mhz PII machine
and then a 400 Mhz MMX machine a co-worker had. Both machines
were set with boot from CDROM first and I am using Sleeper's 1.02
iso. :(

If I boot with Secondary master as AUTO in the BIOS, I get a "F4" message
on both machines. If I select NONE, I do not get this message. Both
either way, if I have my orig. Tivo drive as the Sec. Master, the machine
will not load from the CDROM. :mad:

On both machines, if I remove the Tivo disk, the CDROM will boot up normally and I get the initial coose menu from Sleeper (prom, Monte, etc.).

Any ideas ?

Thanks

[PlainBill]

I probably am overlooking something VERY simple, but work's
got me so befuddled now that I can't play like I want :confused: !!

I tried a couple of different machines and got the same result. I
put my 40 gig drive from the SD-DVR40 into a 300 Mhz PII machine
and then a 400 Mhz MMX machine a co-worker had. Both machines
were set with boot from CDROM first and I am using Sleeper's 1.02
iso. :(

If I boot with Secondary master as AUTO in the BIOS, I get a "F4" message
on both machines. If I select NONE, I do not get this message. Both
either way, if I have my orig. Tivo drive as the Sec. Master, the machine
will not load from the CDROM. :mad:

On both machines, if I remove the Tivo disk, the CDROM will boot up normally and I get the initial coose menu from Sleeper (prom, Monte, etc.).

Any ideas ?

Thanks

If I understand you correctly, in both systems you have a Windows hard drive as primary master, and the CDROM as primary slave. Boot sequence is set to boot from CDROM first. If you don't have your TiVo drive hooked up, the system boots from the CDROM and you get the main menu. If you have the Secondary master set to Auto you get an error (hit F4 to continue); if set to none it simply hangs.

Given the age of the systems, I would suspect the BIOS has a problem with the capacity of the drive. Earlier BIOS' were not written with the possibility of a hard drive of more than 8 Gig in mind. Since you've already got the case open, see if you can determine the make and model of the motherboard, then check with the manufacturer's web site to see if an updated bios is available.

PlainBill

[sanderton]

Check the obvious - the jumper settings on the TiVo drives.

[tytyty]

Some bioses have this feature, check if its on, linux should still detect the device as it probes the bus itself and does not depend on the bios information.