Thread: Anyone ever upgrade a TIVO?

http://www.newreleasesvideo.com/hins...to/index9.html
http://www.weaknees.com/diy-upgrade.php
http://www.maximumpc.com/reprints/re...002-03-04.html

Check out the last link.. its the most newbie friendly. I've done like 10 TIVOs so far. Its not that hard. I came in knowing linux though. My friends send everything to me to mod. The funny thing is i don't own a tivo.. oh well

Originally Posted by hijinks21

http://www.newreleasesvideo.com/hins...to/index9.html
http://www.weaknees.com/diy-upgrade.php
http://www.maximumpc.com/reprints/re...002-03-04.html

Check out the last link.. its the most newbie friendly. I've done like 10 TIVOs so far. Its not that hard. I came in knowing linux though. My friends send everything to me to mod. The funny thing is i don't own a tivo.. oh well

Man thanks for the reply!!

I'll check those site out!! And check your mail box...I might be sending you my TIVO to have it modded! hee hee!

the last one is the most newbie and linux idiot friendly. The hardest part is the /dev/hdb part for ordering the drives but its not that hard

primary IDE - master = /dev/hda
primary IDE - slave = /dev/hdb
secondary IDE master = /dev/hdc
secondary IDE slace = /dev/hdd

the only part you could screw up your system is if you bless you tivo to the wrong drive.. then your in trouble Well maybe.., i have never tried to see what would happen

<WARNING>You may become addicted to TiVo Tinkering. It starts with a simple hard drive upgrade. and then it leads to hard core Video Extraction and Archiving to DVD, Streaming over the LAN to Pc's or an Xbox, over the internet, Caller ID on TV screen, Web Access & Control... OH, it's too much fun.

You think people talk alot about Cars, PC's or even CarPCs. Well TiVo owners are the biggest bunch of zealots I know. God help any of you if you make the mistake of asking a TiVo Owner "What's Tivo?" You'll get cornered and won't be able to leave until you agree it's the greatest thing since slice bread. My family and friends think I'm insane.

with weaknees link above you can generally get a plug and play upgrade, If you want to DIY, then DealDatabase and
AVS TiVo Community are the 2 places to start. AVS prohibits Video Extraction discussion, but I think it's the best place to start.

The 2 key documents to look for are Hinsdale 2.0, which will instruct you on the HD upgrades and then Steve Jenkin's TiVo Hacking How To has instructions on connecting to the TiVo, transferring software, i.e Telnet, FTP. Both are found in the stickies of the AVS forum.

As a beginner I would start at the AVS forums particularly the upgrade forum, even though they forbid discussion of video extraction.



Have fun. Don't be scared of the Linux, there's enough newbie handholding in the 2 documents


Edit: The older (series 1) are easier to hack. Which model is it?

Originally Posted by ose-ml320

<WARNING>You may become addicted to TiVo Tinkering. It starts with a simple hard drive upgrade. and then it leads to hard core Video Extraction and Archiving to DVD, Streaming over the LAN to Pc's or an Xbox, over the internet, Caller ID on TV screen, Web Access & Control... OH, it's too much fun.

You think people talk alot about Cars, PC's or even CarPCs. Well TiVo owners are the biggest bunch of zealots I know. God help any of you if you make the mistake of asking a TiVo Owner "What's Tivo?" You'll get cornered and won't be able to leave until you agree it's the greatest thing since slice bread. My family and friends think I'm insane.

with weaknees link above you can generally get a plug and play upgrade, If you want to DIY, then DealDatabase and
AVS TiVo Community are the 2 places to start. AVS prohibits Video Extraction discussion, but I think it's the best place to start.

The 2 key documents to look for are Hinsdale 2.0, which will instruct you on the HD upgrades and then Steve Jenkin's TiVo Hacking How To has instructions on connecting to the TiVo, transferring software, i.e Telnet, FTP. Both are found in the stickies of the AVS forum.

As a beginner I would start at the AVS forums particularly the upgrade forum, even though they forbid discussion of video extraction.



Have fun. Don't be scared of the Linux, there's enough newbie handholding in the 2 documents


Edit: The older (series 1) are easier to hack. Which model is it?

You have a PM and it's an RS-112

I don't know the RS-112, who makes it?

<Sorry long post, but I do love this stuff>

I had ZERO linux knowledge before starting, and I only ran into a few hickups, which were easily resolved with a quick search of the AVS site.

I don't know the RS-112, but different models have different upgrade abilities and diff specs. Series 1 vs Series 2; Amount of Ram (16MB vs 32MB); 1 drive or 2 drives; Tivo StandAlone (SA) or DirecTiVo combo box

The simplest thing to do is to add a hard drive. Get the Hinsdale step by step and read through it a couple of times. If you've taken out drives and understand Primary/Secondary and can set jumper setting for Master/Slave you can easily understand how Linux does it. Also understanding how Linux does its partitions helps, but it's easy to pickup, linux "hda1" is HD,Primary IDE, Master, Partition1, which typically translates to your C Drive.

Although Hinsdale includes many "forks in the road" depending on what type of system you have and what type of HD upgrade you want, for instance, replace a 1 drive system with 1 or 2 drives, keeping or disregarding previous recordings, or simply adding a drive to a single drive system, don't get overwhelmed. I have seen that Weaknees.com has a website that will do a step by step Q&A and then give you a custom (simplified Hinsdale) step-by-step HOW TO for adding a drive. although I have not used it.

I suggest reading though Hinsdale, decide the upgrade path you want, highlight the required passages, ("X" out the others just to be sure) get all the software that it suggests you "might" need and give it a shot. If possible, it's nice to have a separate Tivo installation PC, preferably with Win98 (there are issues related to Win2000 and XP) and then a separate online PC, if you have questions during the install.

As a precaution against newbie mistakes, I would take the original drives out and keep them as a BACKUP, and install a new single 120GB. If $ allows

I've hacked 2 Sony SAT-T60's (series1 DirectTiVo models) this way, which gives 100+ hours. TiVo can't natively support greater than 137GB drives (real hassle to support >137GB drives) though you can have 2 120's, but when my TiVos with 120s gets full the NowShowing Menu can get kinda slow, and my models have 32MB ram, some models only have 16MB, which are even slower

Up to this point it's more of an upgrade than HACKING

It gets more involve form here on out but the Steve Jenkins How To will guide you and accomplish what you are looking for. It is a GREAT step by step HOW TO

I assume the network card is a TurboNet or TivoNet. I assume you have a router with DHCP that will assign you TiVO a Local IP (You can set up a static IP, but it's just a bit more involved)

Remote contol of the Tivo via TiVoweb (Steve Jenkins how to shows how to set it up), is really a matter of remote access to your home network, which is primarily a matter of security. You DO NOT WANT YOUR TIVO DIRECTLY ACCESSIBLE TO THE INTERNET. Port scans can crash it. and there is no real security solutions for the Tivo itself. I directly connect to my Tivo via VPN connection from my laptop to my home router or I use XP remote desktop to conect to my home PC and then connect to Tivo. Other more complicated solutions exist.

The best advice is READ READ READ the forums and the Docs mentioned and then take it one step at a time. Don't try and do it all at one time. HD one day and then the hack another, learn the linux stuff and then see if you wanna get into video extraction (which is why I started) I now have All 9 seasons of Seinfeld with commercials edited out on DVD. I archive PayPer View movies, Lots of stuff for the kids, which is why my 700GB+ of HD storage is almost full myHTPC is a fantastic frontend for media server.

<WARNING> One work of caution. It relates to what is called the "wife/girl friend factor" I have observed what has been described as an "event bug" which exists in the TiVo software. I have never seen it happen on a Tivo with only a HD upgraded, but have seen it on "hacked" TiVos. Apparently some of the software mods exacerbate the bug, which will causes the Tivo to lock up (while still playing/recording a show) but you can't control the Tivo with the remote or the buttons on the BOX. It requires a REBOOT either via unplugging the unit or logging into the Tivo via Telnet and rebooting via linux command (I had no idea what Telnet was before all this). Wifes/Girlfriends and Children don't like this and get very irritated and will give you grief for messing up their TiVo. I don't know if it is limited to my model as I don't see a lot of people complaing about it, but it happens on mine<END WARNING>

Go for it and have fun.

I feel this is a better place than the for sale thread. I have the hacking tivo book, brand new shown here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...694364-4220163

I will sell it for 15$ shipped if anybody wants it. I was going to get a tivo but I have put it off for a while.

Originally Posted by ose-ml320

<Sorry long post, but I do love this stuff>

I had ZERO linux knowledge before starting, and I only ran into a few hickups, which were easily resolved with a quick search of the AVS site.

I don't know the RS-112, but different models have different upgrade abilities and diff specs. Series 1 vs Series 2; Amount of Ram (16MB vs 32MB); 1 drive or 2 drives; Tivo StandAlone (SA) or DirecTiVo combo box

The simplest thing to do is to add a hard drive. Get the Hinsdale step by step and read through it a couple of times. If you've taken out drives and understand Primary/Secondary and can set jumper setting for Master/Slave you can easily understand how Linux does it. Also understanding how Linux does its partitions helps, but it's easy to pickup, linux "hda1" is HD,Primary IDE, Master, Partition1, which typically translates to your C Drive.

Although Hinsdale includes many "forks in the road" depending on what type of system you have and what type of HD upgrade you want, for instance, replace a 1 drive system with 1 or 2 drives, keeping or disregarding previous recordings, or simply adding a drive to a single drive system, don't get overwhelmed. I have seen that Weaknees.com has a website that will do a step by step Q&A and then give you a custom (simplified Hinsdale) step-by-step HOW TO for adding a drive. although I have not used it.

I suggest reading though Hinsdale, decide the upgrade path you want, highlight the required passages, ("X" out the others just to be sure) get all the software that it suggests you "might" need and give it a shot. If possible, it's nice to have a separate Tivo installation PC, preferably with Win98 (there are issues related to Win2000 and XP) and then a separate online PC, if you have questions during the install.

As a precaution against newbie mistakes, I would take the original drives out and keep them as a BACKUP, and install a new single 120GB. If $ allows

I've hacked 2 Sony SAT-T60's (series1 DirectTiVo models) this way, which gives 100+ hours. TiVo can't natively support greater than 137GB drives (real hassle to support >137GB drives) though you can have 2 120's, but when my TiVos with 120s gets full the NowShowing Menu can get kinda slow, and my models have 32MB ram, some models only have 16MB, which are even slower

Up to this point it's more of an upgrade than HACKING

It gets more involve form here on out but the Steve Jenkins How To will guide you and accomplish what you are looking for. It is a GREAT step by step HOW TO

I assume the network card is a TurboNet or TivoNet. I assume you have a router with DHCP that will assign you TiVO a Local IP (You can set up a static IP, but it's just a bit more involved)

Remote contol of the Tivo via TiVoweb (Steve Jenkins how to shows how to set it up), is really a matter of remote access to your home network, which is primarily a matter of security. You DO NOT WANT YOUR TIVO DIRECTLY ACCESSIBLE TO THE INTERNET. Port scans can crash it. and there is no real security solutions for the Tivo itself. I directly connect to my Tivo via VPN connection from my laptop to my home router or I use XP remote desktop to conect to my home PC and then connect to Tivo. Other more complicated solutions exist.

The best advice is READ READ READ the forums and the Docs mentioned and then take it one step at a time. Don't try and do it all at one time. HD one day and then the hack another, learn the linux stuff and then see if you wanna get into video extraction (which is why I started) I now have All 9 seasons of Seinfeld with commercials edited out on DVD. I archive PayPer View movies, Lots of stuff for the kids, which is why my 700GB+ of HD storage is almost full myHTPC is a fantastic frontend for media server.

<WARNING> One work of caution. It relates to what is called the "wife/girl friend factor" I have observed what has been described as an "event bug" which exists in the TiVo software. I have never seen it happen on a Tivo with only a HD upgraded, but have seen it on "hacked" TiVos. Apparently some of the software mods exacerbate the bug, which will causes the Tivo to lock up (while still playing/recording a show) but you can't control the Tivo with the remote or the buttons on the BOX. It requires a REBOOT either via unplugging the unit or logging into the Tivo via Telnet and rebooting via linux command (I had no idea what Telnet was before all this). Wifes/Girlfriends and Children don't like this and get very irritated and will give you grief for messing up their TiVo. I don't know if it is limited to my model as I don't see a lot of people complaing about it, but it happens on mine<END WARNING>

Go for it and have fun.

YGPM