My Model 2000 is now on life support! Halp!

[goofeyfoot]

Hello:

I have a model 2000. It is one of the Sony ones. I know it's old but I really like it a lot. I don't want to buy a new one.

Anyway, I hacked it about a year and a half ago and loved the expanded memory and all.

Also put one of those Net cards in it so I didn't have to use the phone line anymore.

Well now the thing won't boot up. It's just frozen in "starting up" splash screen mode. It won't accept any controls from the remote or anything. I tried powering it off to no avail.

So I imagine that something is pretty badly messed up. Like maybe I need a new drive or something.

Does anyone have any suggestions of what I can do. Unfortunately I never did get to make a backup when I hacked it. My linux skills are pretty much non existent. So when I got to the backup directions I never did get a backup to work. I must say though that other than that detail the hack went pretty nicely for a guy that doesn't know too much about linux.

So do you guys know what I should do? Is there a way to salvage this thing even though it's frozen up. If not, can I get an image somewhere, if that's even legal? Is the thing even fixable at this point? What should I do?

Thanks a lot for reading and I hope to hear from someone soon. I can't live without this thing, stupid as that may sound.

Best regards.

Michael

[captain_video]

Pull the drive and run the manufacturer's diagnostic on it while it's installed in your PC. You can download the diagnostic program from the manufacturer's website. If you've got the original drive then it's most likely toast due to its age. You can download images from DVRUpgrade.com in the form of a bootable CD image called Instantcake. The image will cost you $20 and they're legit. Burn the image to a CD-R and test it to make sure your PC will boot from it. You'll have to configure your PC's BIOS settings to make the CD-ROM the first boot device. Once you're sure the boot CD works, shut down the PC and install your Tivo drive. Power it up and follow the onscreen prompts to restore the image to the Tivo drive. Shut down the PC, reinstall the Tivo drive, and plug it in.

[goofeyfoot]

Dear Captain Video:

Thanks for your sage advice. I have been worried sick about this Tivo since it failed. I know it's dumb but when you get used to something that works, you like to stick with it.

Oh, one final question. If I get the InstantCake thing do I have to re-hack or does it come prehacked? Or am I even supposed to say that word here?

Thanks again for your help. I'm on it.

Michael

[stevel]

Hacking R us here at DDB. InstantCake does not come "pre-hacked". You will have to redo your hacks. Pretty easy on a Series 1.

[captain_video]

You will definitely have to rehack it once you've restored the Instantcake image. However, after you've hacked it, create a backup image and it will retain your hacks. If the Tivo ever dies on you again you can simply restore the image to a new drive and you're off to the races.;)

You're also in the right place to discuss hacking a Tivo. You may be confused with the anal control the mods have over at the Tivo Community Forums, although things seem to be loosening up a bit now that they're under new management. The implementation of TivoToGo on the latest models appears to have created a new dialogue for video extraction that was simply forbidden previously. You just have to be careful about how you refer to it.

[goofeyfoot]

Houston, we have a problem.

Was reading the Instantcake instructions and it seems like you have to run the cd rom on the master IDE and the new Tivo drive on IDE 2.

Well my computer is mostly SATA. There is one (only) IDE channel on it. But the CD rom is on that. So I would end up with both the CD rom and the new Tivo drive on the same IDE which sounds impossible.

Is there a way to work around this?

Thanks again for helping me out.

Best regards.

Michael

[goofeyfoot]

Houston, we have a problem.

Was reading the Instantcake instructions and it seems like you have to run the cd rom on the master IDE and the new Tivo drive on IDE 2.

Well my computer is mostly SATA. There is one (only) IDE channel on it. But the CD rom is on that. So I would end up with both the CD rom and the new Tivo drive on the same IDE which sounds impossible.

Is there a way to work around this?

Thanks again for helping me out.

Best regards.

Michael

Was also wondering whether I could use a PCI to IDE adapter to accomplish this?

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

Michael

[jt1134]

If you've only got one IDE channel, you'll have to use some kind of adapter. In the past I've used both SATA to IDE and USB to IDE adapters. In doing this I'd recommend to use the boot cd from mfslive.org for reimaging.

Pop the instantcake cd in your pc, and open it up. Look in the /images folder and you'll see a file name 000001. That's your tivo image. Copy it to a usb stick or something, boot with mfslive and restore it.

[goofeyfoot]

If you've only got one IDE channel, you'll have to use some kind of adapter. In the past I've used both SATA to IDE and USB to IDE adapters. In doing this I'd recommend to use the boot cd from mfslive.org for reimaging.

Pop the instantcake cd in your pc, and open it up. Look in the /images folder and you'll see a file name 000001. That's your tivo image. Copy it to a usb stick or something, boot with mfslive and restore it.

So based on what you said I guess I couldn't just use the instantcake CD with the one ide channel plus the pci/ide adapter? It would seem that this would work but maybe not. I think I will try it and then do what you said, assuming the first way doesn't work.

Thanks for your help.

Michael

[goofeyfoot]

If you've only got one IDE channel, you'll have to use some kind of adapter. In the past I've used both SATA to IDE and USB to IDE adapters. In doing this I'd recommend to use the boot cd from mfslive.org for reimaging.

Pop the instantcake cd in your pc, and open it up. Look in the /images folder and you'll see a file name 000001. That's your tivo image. Copy it to a usb stick or something, boot with mfslive and restore it.

Man I have been trying to do this all day and I can't do it. Can someone provide a little detail for a non-computer person?

I did load the 000001 file onto a thumb drive. I also did create the mfslive boot cd.

But I can't seem to do a restore. It's not that easy. If you look at the MFS directions, the bulk of which would probably fit on a stick of gum, you are told to "mount" the drive with a particular command. I can't mount the new drive with that command even though it is the master on the primary IDE. I tried "hda1, hdb1," and nothing works as far as mounting is concerned. You get some sort of "can't mount" error.

Is there some way to see what drive letter to use and then mount it without just guessing like I have been?

By the way I formated the new drive with Windows XP. Not sure if I was supposed to do that.

I was able to "mount" the stuff on the thumb drive and I could actually see it in the "DOS" folder or whatever that's called.

Also, I noticed there is a "Windows" version of the MFS tools. Will that let me just paste the 000001 file onto the new drive? Can't imagine anything that logical and easy could actually work, but who knows?

Would be grateful for some detail on all this stuff.

Thanks.

Michael

[jt1134]

you don't need to mount the new drive, you only need to mount the usb drive.

you could use something like : dmesg | grep hd[a-z] to see exactly where your target drive is connected. it doesn't matter how the target drive is formatted either.

altogether :
mount /dev/sda1 /dos (mount usb drive)
dmesg | grep hd[a-z] (find where your target drive is connected)
restore -s 127 -xzpi /dos/000001 /dev/hdX (where 'X' is the drive letter found previously)

[goofeyfoot]

you don't need to mount the new drive, you only need to mount the usb drive.

you could use something like : dmesg | grep hd[a-z] to see exactly where your target drive is connected. it doesn't matter how the target drive is formatted either.

altogether :
mount /dev/sda1 /dos (mount usb drive)
dmesg | grep hd[a-z] (find where your target drive is connected)
restore -s 127 -xzpi /dos/000001 /dev/hdX (where 'X' is the drive letter found previously)

OK: Will try this right now. Your commands are a lot different than the ones that show in the mfsboot directions but I will try everything right now.

By the way, I am the guy who only has one IDE channel. I also created a "second" IDE with one of those PCI to IDE converter things. Can you "grep" or whatever it is called to such a fake IDE? Maybe it has to say "sd[a-z] instead of what you wrote? Only reason I am asking is that it will prevent me from having to reconnect everything yet again.

Thanks again.

Michael

[goofeyfoot]

you don't need to mount the new drive, you only need to mount the usb drive.

you could use something like : dmesg | grep hd[a-z] to see exactly where your target drive is connected. it doesn't matter how the target drive is formatted either.

altogether :
mount /dev/sda1 /dos (mount usb drive)
dmesg | grep hd[a-z] (find where your target drive is connected)
restore -s 127 -xzpi /dos/000001 /dev/hdX (where 'X' is the drive letter found previously)

Wow that worked so well that now I want to break something just so I can fix it.

It really did work well. Your commands were a lot different than the ones in the book but yours worked.

Now I am trying to use the msf boot disk to make a backup of the old drive - even though it might be toast.

Here's what I did.

I typed your "grep" thing and found out that the drive I am trying to backup TO is called hda.

I also found that the drive I wanted to backup FROM, ie the old toasted Tivo drive is called hdc.

I mounted the hda drive, using the command you have above.

Then I tried to backup, going by what the book said for a "fast" backup. Here it is.

backup -6so /dos/mybackup.bak /dev/hdc.

The error I got said something about "read-only file system." In short, it didn't work.

Are there commands which I could use to try to back up this old drive?

Thanks again for your help.

Right now the Tivo with its new drive is trying to go through the phone call to set itself up. Looks like everything worked out pretty good.

Best regards.

Michael

[ScanMan]

Then I tried to backup, going by what the book said for a "fast" backup. Here it is.

backup -6so /dos/mybackup.bak /dev/hdc.

The error I got said something about "read-only file system." In short, it didn't work.

Are there commands which I could use to try to back up this old drive?
Is this destination drive NTFS formatted? MFSLive and most Linux distros these days cannot write reliably to NTFS formatted drives. You'll need a FAT/FAT32 drive/partition - you could even use the thumb drive.

[goofeyfoot]

Is this destination drive NTFS formatted? MFSLive and most Linux distros these days cannot write reliably to NTFS formatted drives. You'll need a FAT/FAT32 drive/partition - you could even use the thumb drive.

ScanMan:

OK, I see. Interestingly, the mfs directions just said "...you need to mount dos or windows formatted drive..." so yes, I went ahead with the NTFS drive and that's probably just what the problem is. I have about a 4 GB Fat 32 partition on one drive. I don't know exactly how to mount that. Maybe that little partition is too small anyway. These mount commands are hard to understand for a novice, that's for sure.

Is it OK to write the file onto the thumb drive (as you suggested) temporarily and then store that file onto an NTFS file later for safekeeping, just using the Win XP drag and drop? Just wanted to store the resulting backup somewhere where it will be safe - cuz I sure don't want to have to do all this stuff again!

Thanks for your help again.

Michael

[ScanMan]

As you said, you could write the backup image to the thumb drive and then store it on the NTFS drive. MFSLive can read from NTFS fine for a restore.

The 4G drive is plenty; at most, a truncated backup (no recordings) should only be a couple hundred megs.

To mount the FAT32 you need to know which number partition. If you sort thru the dmesg output you should be able to see the partition layout. Assuming it was the second partition on the drive, you would do something like:
mount -t vfat /dev/hda2 /dos

[goofeyfoot]

As you said, you could write the backup image to the thumb drive and then store it on the NTFS drive. MFSLive can read from NTFS fine for a restore.

The 4G drive is plenty; at most, a truncated backup (no recordings) should only be a couple hundred megs.

To mount the FAT32 you need to know which number partition. If you sort thru the dmesg output you should be able to see the partition layout. Assuming it was the second partition on the drive, you would do something like:
mount -t vfat /dev/hda2 /dos

Scanman:

I did what you suggested earlier - that is I saved the backup onto a thumb drive. Then to test it I restored the new backup to yet another hard drive and it works perfectly in the actual Tivo.

So now I know I have a good backup for use anytime something like this happens again. I hope these backups don't get "stale" with age!

Thanks for all your help. You saved me a heck of a lot of time.

Best regards.

Micahel