BIG Tivo sound problem/Tivo repairers.....

[PhilG]

:(

For some time my Tivo has had the annoying habit of losing the ability to record sound when it reboots

Well, last week it rebooted whilst I was away (typical) and now it doesn't record sound, nor do I get sound when watching live TV.

I have restarted it numerous times (including "power off, do something else for a while and power on again") all to no avail.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Alternatively, as a Plan B - who has good reccomendations of Tivo repairers???

Many thanks :(

[Automan]

Assuming you are recording from a STB and you get sound in AUX bypass mode I have found the following always works.

Unplug STB from mains
Unplug Tivo from mains.
Plug Tivo back into mains
Wait for tivo to boot to Tivo Central
Plug STB back in
Allow STB to boot
Take STB out of standby.

Try Live TV

Fingers crossed you should have sound.

Good Luck

Automan.

[PhilG]

No sound in AUX either :)

[PhilG]

That should have been :( of course

[OzSat]

What if you connect the SCART lead going into TiVo directly into the TV ?

[PhilG]

Unfortunately I'd need to be an inverted mole to get behind all my gizmos to start moving cables around (might need to though) but that wouldn't cause the lack of sound/picture on RF would it?

[blindlemon]

If you get no sound on aux bypass then there is almost certainly no sound reaching the TiVo.

[PhilG]

Hmmm

What does the "aux" button actually do then??

[PhilG]

For anyone else following this, in my Tivo kernel log, I do have the dreaded:

Jan 31 19:47:02 (none) kernel: Msp: error reading MSP HW ver.
Jan 31 19:47:02 (none) kernel: Msp: MajorRevCode Version 0x0
Jan 31 19:47:02 (none) kernel: I2C arbitration error at address 0x88.
Jan 31 19:47:02 (none) kernel: Msp: error reading ROM ver.
Jan 31 19:47:02 (none) kernel: Msp: ROM Version 0x0
Jan 31 19:47:02 (none) kernel: Msp: ProductCode = 0x0
Jan 31 19:47:02 (none) kernel: Msp: *** Unknown MSP product!!! ***0x0

But FINALLY after the umpteenth reboot, I finally get to see:

Jan 1 00:03:15 (none) kernel: Msp: MajorRevCode Version 0x4
Jan 1 00:03:15 (none) kernel: Msp: ROM Version 0xa25
Jan 1 00:03:15 (none) kernel: Msp: ProductCode = 0xa
Jan 1 00:03:15 (none) kernel: Msp: MSP3410
Jan 1 00:03:15 (none) kernel: MSP34X0D

HOORAY

[PhilG]

PS - What's "I2C"???

[Automan]

I2C Inter-Intergrated Bus http://www.esacademy.com/faq/i2c/

Your problem is the classic MSP chip not initalizing properly.

However, I always thought sound still worked in this fault condition when you press AUX on the remote which seems to bypass the MSP chip.

Automan.

[cyril]

Only one of the 20 TiVos I have had in the last 8 years has had this fault, and it only happened once, so I am guessing it is a rare fault/bug in the chip.

[Automan]

I never had this problem with any of my 3 x Tivo boxes till I fitted them with cachecards and 200G hard drives.

Now virtually every time on startup I get no sound unless I power down my STB's first (with all three Tivo's).

Automan.

[PhilG]

The final reboot that worked had the STB powered UP whilst I did a soft restart

[healeydave]

The way the Series 1 board was designed means the MSP (audio chip) is very suseptible to the slightest noise produced on the main board.

This can be produced by a failing descrete component like a bad cap or resistor (count them there are hundreds) which might not otherwise have shown any other signs or symptoms.

The CacheCard enhances the possability of noise produced on the main board significantly (especially if RAM is also installed) and is often why people don't notice the problem until they have a CacheCard fitted. Even certain types of SDRAM sticks add to the odds yet again!

In the past, I have had the following scenario:

2 x Tivo's that work flawlessly without anything connected to the Expansion Slot.

One of the Tivos will still work flawlessly with a cachecard fitted along with SDRAM

The other Tivo will start having sound problems with the same hard disk, cachecard & SDRAM installed from the other machine!

The only thing unique is the Main Board, but this works fine within the parameters it was designed for (e.g. without the cachecard).

I'm not knocking the cachecard by the way, I think its the best thing invented for the tivo, I'm just making the point that the Tivo Main Board is a little bit sensitive to things being added to the expansion slot.

I would also like to point out that I have had many units fail in exactly the same way without anything connected to the Expansion Port, I think it just depends on how severe the noise issue is and probably where-abouts it is!

Regs
Dave.

[PhilG]

How bizarre

I just (accidentally) powered down Tivo when I was putting it back under the TV.

It rebooted OK with sound, but the kernel log has NO METION of MSP initialisation AT ALL.

No error message and no success message

Odd??