Almost there trouble

[JaO]

I can't believe this topic hasn't been beaten to death but the search shows no results.

I've got a dsr6000 that gets to the "Almost there" screen but never moves further. I changed drives. I've taken the drive in this unit and put it into another and it boots right up. I changed drive cables and power supply. I've re-seated the little white ribbon cables. I've formated and put xtreme onto a drive. Nothing is getting past the almost there screen. Is this a bad ram? Any suggestions as to what I'm overlooking? Thanks.
JaO

[captain_video]

I assume that you mean that you changed the power supply cable and not the power supply itself. Did you also check the ribbon cable between the mainboard and the front panel? I've heard that this can sometimes be as problematic as the ribbon cable between the power supply and mainboard. I would suggest checking the voltages on the power supply connector with the drives connected and the DTivo powered up. You should get approx. +5 volts and +12 volts on the red and yellow pins with respect to ground (black wires). Make sure your drives and fan are spinning up when power is applied. If not, then the power supply is probably the culprit. The fact that the drives work in another DTivo tends to rule them out as being bad. Also check and make sure the IDE cable is seated properly at each end.

[JaO]

Changed out the supply, reseated both ribbon cables, Changed HD cable....I'm just missing somethin and I don't know what.

[DoubleAgent]

I have a DTivo with exactly the same symptom. I put 25x on it and it went through the process of updating and rebooting. Then it says "Almost there . ."

I was under the impression that this is the point where the software validates all of the peripheral hardware (modem, etc) and that a bad component will halt the process. Some had commented that I should look for burn marks near the modem port (evidence of surge/lightning). I see none.

Obvioulsy the base unit is up and running or it could not display the message. Possibly the decoder(s) is bad, etc. But I would think that it would display something about sending the unit to be repaired.

DA

[JaO]

Double agent,

Thanks for the reply. So did you ever fix the problem and how?

[DoubleAgent]

JaO,
No, I gave up for the moment. It is sitting on the shelf.

I tried to boot Linux from a cd and then mount the drive to look at the logs, but I have not been able to get it mounted. Maybe an indication of a problem, maybe and operator problem.

I have a Maxtor 160gb drive that I was going to use in it, but now I am considering just adding it to my current DTivo so it will have 2 x 160's.

The unit was an ebay purchase and exhibited the exact same behaviour when I got it (still sealed). I had hoped popping x25 on it would work. No go.

DA

[JaO]

Double agent,

If you want to sell you defective unit cheap, I'd buy it to experiment on in hopes of fixing mine.

I tried adding a 160 to my good Tivo using xtreme but it won't recognize the full 160GB.

[BubbleLamp]

Originally posted by JaO
I tried adding a 160 to my good Tivo using xtreme but it won't recognize the full 160GB.

It never will. It will see 137GB max.

[DoubleAgent]

Yeah, the 160 does have wasted space (unless these posts I see about expanding the file system are true) but I couldn't get any 120's and the cost of the 160 was (on sale) less than the 100, so I grabbed it. 17gb is what, 8 hours? 4 movies? Hey, its space.

"Disk Space - The Final Frontier . . . . ."
DA