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There are a couple ways to do it. The easiest is to download Dylan's Linux
bootdisk and run my BlessTiVo program. There is the original way which requires
more work but is more fun for the "hacker" crowd. Both will be described below.
- Download Dylan's boot disk at http://www.geocities.com/tivohack or http://www.idrive.com/tivohack
- Read the readme for Dylan's disk if you need more detail for any of the
below items.
- Extract the files from the archive. Get a blank formatted floppy ready
and run the batch file from the archive. It will prompt you to insert a floppy
in drive a, and it will create the boot disk for you.
- Connect the new drive you wish to add to your PC. You can connect it to
either the Primary Slave, Secondary Master, or Secondary Slave. I recommend
using either of the above Slave settings. Regardless of which you pick you
must set the appropriate jumper on your drive to reflect the master or slave
setting.
- Make sure your PC BIOS auto-detects the drive and its size correctly.
- Boot the PC with the new drive connected and Dylan's floppy in the A drive.
- When the login prompt comes in type in "root" (no quotes) and hit enter.
- Type one of the following commands without the quotes depending on what
port on your motherboard the drive is connected to. Case is important on the
command. Only type ONE of the below commands.
- If the drive is connected as the Primary slave type "BlessTiVo /dev/hdb"
- If the drive is connected as the Secondary Master type "BlessTiVo /dev/hdc"
- If the drive is connected as the Secondary Slave type "BlessTiVo /dev/hdd"
- The program will warn you about what you are going to do. Make sure you
have the right drive connected and are specifying the right port before answering
yes.
- The program will give you feedback noting if the process was successful.
It will report the size of your drive also. Make SURE this value is within
about 2-3GB of your drives actual size. If you run the program on a 30GB drive
and BlessTiVo reports it as a 9GB drive you have a problem.
- DO NOT insert a blessed drive into your TiVo that had the size reported
wrong. If the size is wrong, the most likely issue is your CMOS is not correct.
See the documentation with Dylan's disk for more troubleshooting with the blessing
process.
- If everything went fine you should be able to add the drive to your TiVo.
Make sure the new B drive is set as slave before placing it into your TiVo.
- Boot your TiVo. Go to your "Messages and Setup" screen and then the "System
Information" section. You should see your Storage capacity in this screen. If
you had a 14 hour TiVo and added a 30GB drive you should be at 52 hours and
change. A 30 hour TiVo upgraded with a 30GB drive should give you about 68
hours and change.
- Do NOT remove this blessed drive once added to your TiVo. Once a blessed
drive has been powered up and seen by a TiVo the two drives are married together.
You can't remove a blessed drive and insert a new blessed drive once the first
has been married. If you want to install a new blessed drive, or revert back
to a single drive you will need to use your backup!
This information has been cut and pasted from the original hackers site
http://tivohack.sourceforge.net. I apologize for editing this into steps, but
it makes it easier for me to convert to and from HTML.
- Here's how to add a B drive to your TiVo by "blessing" it. This
is approximately how we did it. We've only done it a few times so far. We will
be refining the process. We simply wanted to get the initial information out
quickly.
- This has only been verified to work on a few units so far. A HDR112 has
been upgraded to 52 hours with a 30 gig Quantum, another HDR112 has been upgraded
to 40 hours with a 20 gig Quantum, and a Sony 30 hour unit has been upgraded
as well with a Maxtor B drive, although the newer Sony/Phillips units have
a drive locking mechanism that makes it very hard to mount their A drives in
a non-TiVo Linux box.
- WARNING: This modification is not "easy". You take all responsibility
for modifying your TiVo in this way. It does involve opening the case and breaking
the warranty sticker. Do not call TiVo support if you make a mistake and break
your TiVo. If you break it, you own both pieces. If you mess up, don't expect
us to fix it for you either. Maybe some day someone will release a utility
that will just bless a drive in 1 easy command on your PC, but at this point,
it's pretty tricky. It requires that you have various technical knowledge about
Linux and other software tools. You could easily render your TiVo inoperable
and possibly unrecoverable.
- WARNING 2: There hasn't been a lot of testing so far on this procedure
of course. Mine seems to be working perfectly at 52 hours, but you must accept
the risk that something bad may happen down the road. We suggest that you back
up your original A drive in some fashion in case you make a mistake. How to
do that we leave up to you.
- PDISK DISCLAIMER: We had to modify the source code to pdisk. Use it at
your own risk. There may be bugs. We're not responsible for any loss of data.
- And PLEASE - be careful when you open the unit. It's power supply is unshielded.
Stay away from it.
- In short - if you don't _understand_ what is going on below, don't do it.
Just being able to read a list of steps may not be enough at this point.
- When I refer to hard drive partitions on the Linux box, I'll use hdX where
X is whatever letter is appropriate for that drive.
- I used a Quantum lct10 30 gig drive (part number QML30000LB-A) that I bought
from www.onsale.com. My off the shelf Quantum seems to have the Quickview and
TiVo extensions in it, perhaps they all do. It is the same drive used in HDR31202's
and presumably the newer Sonys. Any drive may work as a B drive, but I've only
tried my Quantum. Also be aware - the version of Linux on the TiVo doesn't
seem to support drives larger than 33.8 gig. I don't know if TiVo patched their
older kernel to support them. Set the B drive's jumper to slave.
- You need to be able to access the original A drive and new B drive from
another Linux box. To do this on an x86 box, you need to integrate TiVo's modifications
to the Mac partition code. There are some patches on http://tivohack.sourceforge.net/
and http://www.wasteland.org/tivo. Please, if anyone can mirror these few files
it would be very helpful. If we get hit too hard, we'll have to take the files
down. You also need to be able to turn on byte swapping for those 2 drives
(hdX=bswap). I had the most luck with Linux 2.4.0-test1. You also need to enable
the Mac partitioning in the kernel.
- If that all works, you'll see the TiVo's partitions on the A drive hooked
to your Linux box. There should be 11 of them. Mount partition 4 (hdX4) somewhere,
it's an ext2 filesystem. Edit the bottom of etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit so it starts
a bash shell on /dev/ttyS3. Also you need to blank out the first few sectors
on the new B drive, with this command: "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdX bs=512
count=32".
- Get the hard drives back in the TiVo (both of em) and hook up the DSS serial
cable to your computer. You'll need a null modem adapter and gender changer
at the minimum. The terminal settings are 9600,8N1. You should get a bash prompt
shortly after the "please wait a few more seconds" screen. Run this
command: "/sbin/bootpage -D /dev/hdb". Then shut down your TiVo and
hook the B drive back up to the Linux box.
- Now you need a modified version of pdisk which is available on the sites
I mentioned above. Compile it if necessary (it's in RCS format). With the B
drive in the Linux box, run "pdisk /dev/hdX" and type in these commands:
- i w y q
- Then run: "pdisk -d /dev/hdX" and type these commands:
- C 2p 4M "Second MFS application region" MFS C 3p 3p "Second
MFS media region" MFS x m 3 x w y q
- That will create the new partitions. Shut down the Linux box now and mount
the B drive in the TiVo permanently. Turn the TiVo back on and get into the
bash shell on it again.
- You need to mount the diagnostics partition next. Type this on your TiVo:
"mount -t ext2 -o ro /dev/hda7 /mnt". Then run this to add the magic
bit sequence to your new B drive: "/mnt/diag/genAddDiskTiVoID /dev/hdb3".
Type "umount /mnt" to unmount that diagnostics partition, and reboot
your TiVo. That should do it. Check the system information and see if your
capacity increased. If not, you can try this one last thing that I don't believe
is necessary, but it might be: mount the diagnostics partition again, and run
"/mnt/diag/setkeys -globalkeys /dev/hdb".
- That's it. If you want to now, you can edit the rc.sysinit to stop the
bash shell from starting (or if you were smart, you made a backup copy when
you started and can just copy the backup over the modified one).
- Credit for figuring out this procedure goes to cc, Peter Creath, TivoTechie,
and Ron Curry.
Good question. I am sure there have been many creative ways to mount the
new TiVo drive into the case, but the simplest seems to be getting some little
"rubber feat" and sticking them to the bottom of the drive in all four corners.
Then taking some cable ties lengthwise along the unit. (Between the power and
IDE connectors) to hold it sturdy. You could also make a mounting bracket,
but the rubber feat and cable tie seems to be a nice cheap and safe approach.
If you notice major skipping or pausing in your playback, you may need
to switch the IDE cable that came with your TiVo with an ATA66 cable. The ATA66
cable has extra ground wires in it and can better protect the signals from
noise. Most do not have this issue, but if you do the ATA66 cable seems to
fix it. You can get these at most computer stores.
It seems TiVo will be coming out with some new feature that will use 12
hours of storage for some unknown feature at this time. TiVo has stated units
larger than 30 hours will lose 12 hours for this new feature. Nothing is specific
at this time though. Worst case a 14 hour unit upgraded to 52 hours may become
a 40 hour unit when this hits.
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