Cachecard installation

[daveshawuk]

OK. I finally have my cachecard and DIMM. For a UK Tivo where is the definitive place to look for instructions on installing it, and installing whatever s/w is required to install other wonderful modules ?

Thanks in advance, Dave

[Tivo_noob]

Can't get better than this:

http://www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo/cachecard.html

Now come back cursing and swearing when your scraping your knuckles trying to get the bugger to fit...................i hope you haven't got big hands :o

[Blitzed]

not to hijack the thread, but it didn't seem worth creating another one.

I will be getting my cachecard in the next week or so. I was wondering if its ok to install the drivers on the hard drive now then put it all back together and use the tivo. Then just pop the cachecard in when I get it.

Or do you have to do the cachecard straight after the hard drive modifications?

[terryeden]

not to hijack the thread, but it didn't seem worth creating another one.

I will be getting my cachecard in the next week or so. I was wondering if its ok to install the drivers on the hard drive now then put it all back together and use the tivo. Then just pop the cachecard in when I get it.

Or do you have to do the cachecard straight after the hard drive modifications?

It's fine to put the drivers on now. When you boot up you'll get a Silcon Dust splash screen which will load the drivers, whinge because there's no cachecard, then load the TiVo normally.

Make sure you haven't set it to download over the cachecard - otherwise you won't be able to download guide data via your modem.

[Blitzed]

Thank you for the fast reply.

[Pete77]

These may help on the software hacks add ons once you have the Cachecard installed and working.

http://tivo.lightn.org/

www.ljay.org.uk/tivoweb/

www.beaconhill.plus.com/TiVo/tivohacks.htm

www.arielbusiness.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/freeranger/TiVo/HowTo.htm

http://alt.org/wiki/index.php/TiVoWeb%20Modules

http://thomson.tivo.googlepages.com

http://tivo.stevejenkins.com/network_cd.html

http://thomson.tivo.googlepages.com/tivowebplus

http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/?search=oztivo&x=0&y=0

www.tivohackman.com

www.weethet.nl/english/tivo_extract_videos.php

www.deal data base.com/forum (note the spaces between deal, data and base don't exist in the actual URL)

[CarlWalters]

I hadn't come across the penultimate link before - thanks :)

Some day I may post my TiVo2iPod and TiVo2PSP scripts on the last link - bit worried about softies laughing at my risible coding though :D - works for me anyway and I can keep up to date with all things Ambridge :)

[daveshawuk]

Thanks for all the advice and pointers. Still takes a bit of muddling through as many of the sets of instructions seem to supercede each other. I have now prepared and checked I can boot off the ISO image and am building up the courage to lift the lid on my TIVO. The only problem is that the box of old memory I have contains everything BUT a PC133 DIMM. What are the chances of a IBM PC100 REG SDRAM 256MB DIMM working ?

Cheers

Dave

[Pete77]

Thanks for all the advice and pointers. Still takes a bit of muddling through as many of the sets of instructions seem to supercede each other. I have now prepared and checked I can boot off the ISO image and am building up the courage to lift the lid on my TIVO. The only problem is that the box of old memory I have contains everything BUT a PC133 DIMM. What are the chances of a IBM PC100 REG SDRAM 256MB DIMM working ?

Some of the websites are more useful than others but you need to trawl through them to decide which ones. It gets called hacking because its all left down to you the user to pick out what you want to use and of course there are no guarantees any of it will work or any official technical support lines (although there is a pretty good unofficial support line in this forum called blindlemon who also does a lot of the professional Tivo upgrade kits that some people buy).

Blindlemon is probably the only forum member here who knows the definitive answer on the memory question. It definitely can't be faster memory than 133 but not sure about slower.

Or you could also ask the question to the makers of the Cachecard at www.silicondust.com/forum/index.php

[blindlemon]

The RAM should work fine.

The TiVo CPU only runs at 56mhz, so even PC100 RAM is way faster than required.

[Duncan]

not to hijack the thread, but it didn't seem worth creating another one.

I will be getting my cachecard in the next week or so. I was wondering if its ok to install the drivers on the hard drive now then put it all back together and use the tivo. Then just pop the cachecard in when I get it.

Or do you have to do the cachecard straight after the hard drive modifications?
It must be the season for Tivo upgrades. I just put a new 250Gb hard disc in yesterday, but I'm still waiting for the cachecard to turn up.

Like you, I thought I might as well install the drivers while I had the disc out, but for some reason nic_install said the new disc wasn't a valid Tivo drive. I put the disc in and it booted fine, so I'll have another go at figuring out why it was complaining once the card has arrived (I've found a couple of suggestions so far: disabling the drive in the bios, or perhaps the driver for the linux boot disc I used wasn't byte-swapping).

A couple of points I noted while upgrading: I'm pretty sure I had checked the serial number as indicating a two drive system, but when I finally opened it up it was a single drive so I copied the recordings across which took about 1.5 hours. Maybe I just misread the number.

All the upgrade guides say the Tivo drive is set to 'master', but in fact mine was set to 'cable select' (as was my cdrom, and the new drive). Unfortunately I didn't realise what 'cable select' actually means until I read the description on the new drive otherwise I could have saved myself a lot of messing around with jumpers. :o

[daveshawuk]

The RAM should work fine.

The TiVo CPU only runs at 56mhz, so even PC100 RAM is way faster than required.

An update. The good news. The cachecard is installed and I have just completed my first network update :) The bad news is that the DIMM isn't recognised by the Cachecard at all so I'll be running without extra memory - a minor problem.

For the benefit of other "modding" newbies I completed the upgrade using http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=340 in its entirety, with reference to http://www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo/cachecard.html for the hardware parts ( the software installation seems to be more automated nowadays than in Steve's doc ).

The only points at which I struggled or was slightly perturbed were :

1> The first CD image I created would not boot the PC I had prepped for the driver install. I re-created using exactly the same software in another CD drive ( LG rather than Plextor ) and the second version booted fine.

2> When my first network update was underway I expected the activity light on the front of TIVO to go orange as per a phone update. Seems it doesn't. There is no visible indicator that the network update is occuring.

Now I need to work out how to get all the other hacks installed !

Cheers all, Dave from Spain

[Pete77]

Cheapest compatible memory with the Cachecard ( as regularly supplied by TivoHeaven (blindlemon) to his Cachecard customers) is this £30 DIMM from Ebuyer:-

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=22918&_LOC=UK

Of course down in Spain international carriage will add to your costs so it may be cheaper to find a Spanish website supplier.

Alternatively if you have a PC 133 168pin 128MB or especially 256MB DIMM blindlemon maintains that these give a large part of the benefits seen with a 512MB DIMM.

[blindlemon]

I have used that RAM, and I have also used RAM from other sources :)

Just get the cheapest PC100 or PC133 module you can find. I missed that your previous module was a Registered module (which are not supported) - sorry :o

[Blitzed]

I have finally managed to get a backup of my tivo drive (didn't realise it HAD to be fat32 originally).

I am now having problems with the actual driver install. Everything goes ok until I get to the actual transfer. I type in ./nic_install cachecard (and tried just nic_install cachecard). But it just reads for a while and returns "Bus Error". I have tried 3 different floppy disks.

One problem I may be having is that all the files from the driver download wont fit on the floppy as they too big. So I only have what I can on the floppy:

On floppy:

burstd
cachecard.o
cachectl
libpthread.so.0
nic_config_tivo
nic_install
nic_install_tivo
ping

There rest wont fit.

"nic_install_pc_20050218" is the file I have download from silicon. Any help appriciated.

[Blitzed]

anyone any idea why I am getting "bus error" on the floppy disk/drive?

I am thinking that maybe I should burn the files to another cd and use them from there.

Once I have used the boot cd, is it ok to pull it out and put a cd with the drivers in and install like that? Or does the computer use the boot cd during the installation/straight after?

If I am able to use a cd whats the linux command for the cd-rom drive? its on the secondary slave (e.g. HDA, HDB, FD0, etc.)

[Duncan]

anyone any idea why I am getting "bus error" on the floppy disk/drive?

I am thinking that maybe I should burn the files to another cd and use them from there.

Once I have used the boot cd, is it ok to pull it out and put a cd with the drivers in and install like that? Or does the computer use the boot cd during the installation/straight after?

If I am able to use a cd whats the linux command for the cd-rom drive? its on the secondary slave (e.g. HDA, HDB, FD0, etc.)

According to the silicondust faq the mfstools cd doesn't enable byte swapping properly. Try booting from one of the silicondust cd images: that should also help with the floppy size limits.

My Cachecard and DIMM both arrived today, so now I just have to find a quiet period for the Tivo to try this for myself.

[Blitzed]

i'm using the Silicondust boot disk and the floppy disk problem is just that once the files are extracted they come to 1.57mb in size.

[Blitzed]

tried with the cdrom drive, didnt work. Anyone know why the driver download is too big to fit on a floppy disk?

[Pete77]

tried with the cdrom drive, didnt work. Anyone know why the driver download is too big to fit on a floppy disk?

Because you can usually boot a machine with a CD-Rom these days. ;)

[Blitzed]

Done it now, can't believe I missed that the drivers were already on the new boot disk. Thanks for the replies regardless.

[Blitzed]

ok, Tivo is now back together, I got the silcondust screen. with two error (I have no cachecard yet)


"ERROR: Driver failed to load"
"ERROR: No Information in kernel.log"

I assume these are both fine.

I have turned the updates back to dailup, would I be right in thinking all I have to do now is pop the cachecard in when it arrives, wire it up and set the daily call back to network through ftp or something?

[Pete77]

I have turned the updates back to dailup, would I be right in thinking all I have to do now is pop the cachecard in when it arrives, wire it up and set the daily call back to network through ftp or something?

Once the card and RAM are installed telnet to the ftp address of the box from Windows (e.g. telnet 192.168.0.4) and run nic_config_tivo at the bash prompt. This lets you change the daily call to run via broadband and lets you set a username and password and Port number if you plan to access the box and TivoWeb across the internet and via your router (using port forwarding). Next step then is installing TivoWeb.

[daveshawuk]

Pete, as you say the next step is installing Tivoweb. I believe that TIVOWebPlus is the preferred version and have downloaded it ( v1.3.1 ). To a Linux and Tivo hacking newbie the installation instructions look ever so daunting ( I don't even know how to connect to TIVO yet ! ). Can anyone recommend a good set of instructions or a specific hack to undertake first so as to get a feel for how it works ?

Cheers, Dave

[Pete77]

Pete, as you say the next step is installing Tivoweb. I believe that TIVOWebPlus is the preferred version and have downloaded it ( v1.3.1 ). To a Linux and Tivo hacking newbie the installation instructions look ever so daunting ( I don't even know how to connect to TIVO yet ! ).

No TivoWeb 1.9.4 is what you need to install and run with day to day as TivoWebPlus 1.3.1 makes the Tivo unstable if run on the machine all the time from boot up. I ran TivoWebPlus 1.3.1 24/7 for 2 weeks recently and the Tivo started locking up in the Tivo box menus for no reason. Its probably fine on a newer, faster Tivo S2 or Tivo S3 but seems to do things our Tivo S1's don't like.

www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo has instructions on installing TivoWeb.

The things is to take it all one step at a time and gradually add stuff.

[Duncan]

Our recently upgraded Tivo (250Gb + cachecard) has been misbehaving today. :(

Several recordings appear to be corrupt: when playing them back the picture suddenly switches to live tv, and sometimes a minute or so later it switches back to the recording.

Also, after rebooting we lost the sound, which may or may not be related.

My guess is that all this adds up to the PSU being unable to cope. Does that sound like the most probably cause? Anyway, in the meantime we have removed the cachecard and will see if the situation improves.

[Pete77]

My guess is that all this adds up to the PSU being unable to cope. Does that sound like the most probably cause? Anyway, in the meantime we have removed the cachecard and will see if the situation improves.

Have never had the symptoms you describe during over 4 years of Tivo use - 18 months of them with a Cachecard and 2 x 250Gb hard drives. My Tivo is still on the original power supply and seems to cope fine with the two 250Gb drives.

If the symptoms you mention are a know scenario then I'm sure our resident expert blindlemon will probably be able to identify the problem, although of course he may have provided you with the upgraded drive?

A power supply is only £8 or something so its probably worth changing just for the sake of peace of mind although I wonder if an inadequately large swap file or a failure to install the Kernel for hard drives over 137Gb in size isn't perhaps at the back of the problems you are experiencing.

[blindlemon]

Lack of the LBA48 kernel could indeed lead to these symptoms as sector addresses past 137gb would wrap.

If you didn't install an updated kernel when you did the upgrade then switch off the TiVo immediately and run copykern (kernel option 1) on the drive beofre starting it up again.

If you did attempt to install the LBA48 kernel then it would still be worth checking the kernel log after a reboot for the following line
Jan 1 00:01:48 (none) kernel: Linux version 2.1.24-TiVo-2.5 (millert@xerxes.courtesan.com) (gcc version 2.8.1) #14 Wed Oct 8 12:06:25 MDT 2003 If it says "buld@buildmaster" instead of "millert@xerxes.courtesan.com" then you don't have the LBA48 kernel.

[JudyB]

Lack of the LBA48 kernel could indeed lead to these symptoms as sector addresses past 137gb would wrap.

If you didn't install an updated kernel when you did the upgrade then switch off the TiVo immediately and run copykern (kernel option 1) on the drive beofre starting it up again.

If you did attempt to install the LBA48 kernel then it would still be worth checking the kernel log after a reboot for the following line
If it says "buld@buildmaster" instead of "millert@xerxes.courtesan.com" then you don't have the LBA48 kernel.
Thanks - Duncan is out at the moment, but I have found my way through the logs and it says "build@buildmaster17 ... 2002", so I think that we have a case of user error here. Duncan certainly thought that he had run copykern, but it looks like it didn't work for some reason. One of us will post an update when it is clear whether or not running copykern has fixed this!

[Duncan]

Pete77, no blindlemon didn't supply the disc. Dabs did, so I saved myself £££'s at the cost of some anguish and domestic unrest. :o

blindlemon, thank you. The problem was indeed that I got distracted by the lines at the end of the output from copykern which said 'Kernel Updated!' and 'Have a nice day!' and didn't fully read the lines above which said '/cdrom/kernels/kernel-2.5/vmlinux-2.5.px.gz: file not found'. The problem was that the CDROM wasn't mounted on /cdrom. None of the instructions I'd read had said I had to mount the CDROM before running copykern, but at least we've got the right kernel now and I dare say we'll find out in time whether the file system was corrupted or just the recordings. We'll leave the cachecard out for a bit and probably buy a replacement psu for good measure.

I also saved myself some more £££'s buying the cachecard memory from ebuyer, but it only identifies itself as 256Mb rather than the 512Mb I ordered, so since I've removed the cachecard anyway they can have it back. I guess you get what you pay for.

[blindlemon]

Good stuff, glad to hear you are sorted now :):up:

Hopefully, as you say, you caught it in time to prevent any serious corruption occuring so fingers crossed that all will be well...

FWIW, I have plenty of experience of the eBuyer RAM and although, like most budget RAM, you do get a few duds, over 95% have been perfectly good IME, so I guess you've just been unlucky there. Nevertheless, eBuyer's RMA procedure is now much better than it was (although still not lightning fast) so you should get a replacement without too much trouble.

[Duncan]

FWIW, I have plenty of experience of the eBuyer RAM and although, like most budget RAM, you do get a few duds, over 95% have been perfectly good IME, so I guess you've just been unlucky there. Nevertheless, eBuyer's RMA procedure is now much better than it was (although still not lightning fast) so you should get a replacement without too much trouble.
I hope so. Their online returns system says "Unfortunately the return period for this item has now expired." which is wrong as it is well within the 28 days they state. I'll try to contact a human.

[blindlemon]

If you're not in a rush, send them an 'eNote' - they normally get round to responding in less than the stated '7 working days' ( :eek: ), and once they've got your note in their workstream will respond to replies and follow-ups within hours.

[Pete77]

I also saved myself some more £££'s buying the cachecard memory from ebuyer, but it only identifies itself as 256Mb rather than the 512Mb I ordered, so since I've removed the cachecard anyway they can have it back. I guess you get what you pay for.

I have the Ebuyer 512MB of RAM here and have had it installed and in use in the Cachecard since June 2005 with no problems. On a Tivo reboot the DIMM Is always identified correctly as being 512MB during the startup screens.

However Ebuyer regularly change source for their own brand memory and buy wherever its cheapest. As the product was Dead on Arrival strictly speaking you are entitled to a full refund I believe under Sales of Goods Act and other trading standards laws. Perhaps for your own piece of mind you would be better off exchanging it for the Kingston Class 1 512MB DIMM which is only another £10.25 extra (they have a Cl 2 Kingston DIMM for £2 less but if I was you I would stick with the Cl 1). As the Kingston memory costs more money I can't see Ebuyer quibbling too much.

See http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/29659

I would avoid phoning Ebuyer if possible as they use an expensive 10p per minute at all times 0871 number and its a lot more than that and excluded from bundled minutes on a mobile phone. As Blindlemon suggests using their Notes system is probably cheapest and most effective. If you want the memory before Christmas perhaps you could get the Kingston memory somewhere else for much the same price and then go through the slow and long winded process to eventually get the Ebuyer refund. If you go for the exchange with Ebuyer then your memory probably won't show until the New Year.

I think if I were you for my own piece of mind I would actually reformat the hard drives and go through the whole install process again, as ultimately its less distressing than losing a load of recordings three months down the road. Also while you are waiting for the memory you can use the Cachecard as a network card to install TivoWeb etc. Its just that without the memory it won't speed up the Now Playing menus etc but that only becomes an issue once you have more than 150 or so recordings.

[Duncan]

As the product was Dead on Arrival strictly speaking you are entitled to a full refund I believe under Sales of Goods Act and other trading standards laws.
I intend to ask them for a replacement while reserving my legal right to reject it if the replacement isn't satisfactory.

I think if I were you for my own piece of mind I would actually reformat the hard drives and go through the whole install process again, as ultimately its less distressing than losing a load of recordings three months down the road. Also while you are waiting for the memory you can use the Cachecard as a network card to install TivoWeb etc.
Stuff peace of mind. It crashed again last night while recording Hogfather: the recording stops 7 minutes in, but rather bizarrely it kept on playing the recording we were watching at the time, so the first we knew there was a problem was when we couldn't skip the adverts. So now we've got the old 40Gb disc back in, and the 250Gb one is waiting to be reformatted, but alas no Hogfather :(

I know I could put the cachecard drivers on the old drive, but having messed up once I'm actually quite keen to keep that drive untainted as an emergency backup, so I guess we either wait now until we've caught up again, or we do another two hour transfer of the complete contents.

Is there any easy way to pull a recording off the corrupted disc without the palaver of putting it back in the Tivo? I think there is just one thing on the disc that we hadn't watched, so it isn't critical.

[Rob Randall]

According to the TiVo EPG Hogfather is repeated 1pm Christmas Day and part two is 1pm Boxing Day :)

[Pete77]

Is there any easy way to pull a recording off the corrupted disc without the palaver of putting it back in the Tivo? I think there is just one thing on the disc that we hadn't watched, so it isn't critical.

Probably unwise to pull anything off the corrupted disk I would have thought.

blindlemon could advise better than me.

[Duncan]

According to the TiVo EPG Hogfather is repeated 1pm Christmas Day and part two is 1pm Boxing Day :)
But it clashes with Dr Who.

[Rob Randall]

But it clashes with Dr Who.

It clashes with Dr Who Confidential. The main Doctor Who episode is at 7pm.

Dr Who gets repeated a few times into the New Year so I'm sure "Confidential" will be also. Or you can just fire up the VCR to handle the conflict :eek:

I think Hogfather gets repeated again but I don't have access to any listings at the moment to check.

[JudyB]

It clashes with Dr Who Confidential. The main Doctor Who episode is at 7pm.

Dr Who gets repeated a few times into the New Year so I'm sure "Confidential" will be also. Or you can just fire up the VCR to handle the conflict :eek:

I think Hogfather gets repeated again but I don't have access to any listings at the moment to check.
This is strange - unless Duncan and I were both hallucinating this morning the printed Radio Times (which arrived this morning) contradicts the Radio Times and Sky websites.
The printed copy showed Hogfather at about 6PM and not earlier, but the website shows it only at 1PM as you say... If it is that way then we should be OK, since I think that we have only seen things we want to watch on in the evening of Christmas Day.

:rolleyes: P.S. Are hallucinations another symptom of a failing Tivo?

[Rob Randall]

:rolleyes: P.S. Are hallucinations another symptom of a failing Tivo?
And I don't think even blindlemon will have a fix for that ;)

[Pete77]

The printed copy showed Hogfather at about 6PM and not earlier, but the website shows it only at 1PM as you say... If it is that way then we should be OK, since I think that we have only seen things we want to watch on in the evening of Christmas Day.

:rolleyes: P.S. Are hallucinations another symptom of a failing Tivo?

Its called a scheduling change which luckily our faithful Tivos can acommodate provided it is notified to Tribune (who provided Tivo with the listings) by the television channels at least a couple of days before broadcast.

The broadcasters do this kind of thing to acoommodate live sporting events, deaths of important people and tribute programs or even to try and win the ratings war against the opposition and/or if they now realise a very major program may clash with a major program from the opposition.

[Blitzed]

I've got and installed my cachecard completely today, installed Tivoweb and some channel icons. Looking good so far.

1 question, I assume there is a plugin for tivoweb that will allow me to change the season pass order? Just done a search around, hoping someone could help with a link.

Thanks to everyone who helped me along the installation...

[Milhouse]

1 question, I assume there is a plugin for tivoweb that will allow me to change the season pass order? Just done a search around, hoping someone could help with a link.


http://archive2.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=1532393

[Blitzed]

thanks, I dunno why I had problems finding it.

[Duncan]

I know I could put the cachecard drivers on the old drive, but having messed up once I'm actually quite keen to keep that drive untainted as an emergency backup, so I guess we either wait now until we've caught up again, or we do another two hour transfer of the complete contents.

The replacement memory from ebuyer arrived yesterday, so after a couple of hours copying the disc across we're now back on the new drive with the correct kernel this time:o, cachecard, 512Mb RAM and a long bootup time as it loads the cache.

Thanks for the help guys.

[Pete77]

The replacement memory from ebuyer arrived yesterday, so after a couple of hours copying the disc across we're now back on the new drive with the correct kernel this time:o, cachecard, 512Mb RAM and a long bootup time as it loads the cache.

Thanks for the help guys.

Good to hear that its all working now including the Ebuyer memory. Also good luck with installing TivoWeb and all its many very interesting hacks and add ons such as those listed below.

http://tivo.lightn.org/

www.ljay.org.uk/tivoweb/

www.garysargent.co.uk/tivo/hacking.htm

www.beaconhill.plus.com/TiVo/tivohacks.htm

http://www.arielbusiness.pwp.blueyo.../TiVo/HowTo.htm

http://alt.org/wiki/index.php/TiVoWeb%20Modules

http://thomson.tivo.googlepages.com

http://tivo.stevejenkins.com/network_cd.html

http://thomson.tivo.googlepages.com/tivowebplus

http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/?search=oztivo&x=0&y=0

www.tivohackman.com