Problems in Series 1 Original Disks After Upgrade?

rickyjames · 01-17-2006, 10:21 PM

This has been just a terrible week for me and my TiVos. I have two; one is a Humax DVD having the "sluggish controller" problem, a whole other can of worms we won't discuss here...

My OTHER TiVo is my original 30 Hr Phillips Series 1 unit, I think a model 312? This has been a great unit for years now but it started acting up few weeks ago. I came home from work, it's cycling over and over saying "Recorder is starting...just a few minutes more...then bang, a light blue TV screen for a few seconds and it starts over again.

This is a hacked unit with a 100GB hard drive I put in myself several years ago and I think, OK, the drive is burned out, time to replace it, i did it once I can do it again. I get a brand new 160 GB hard drive and do the mfstools transfer trick (you oldtimers know the drill from the hinsdale-how-to ) with my original 30 GB archival TiVo operating system drive, which I've of course kept safe in a filing cabinet all this time.

The new 160 GB drive never gets out of the "starting up" screen. Huh. There's an extra step required in the transfer if the original TiVo drive is software version 2.0 or below; I'm thinking maybe that's what is preventing the 160GB drive from starting the system.

In the meantime, in order to prove it's not a motherboard problem, I decide to put in my original archival 30GB hard drive with the virgin TiVo operating system on it. and try to boot the system with it. It boots. I decide OK, I'll go ahead and go thru setup with the original TiVo hard drive and go with it until I get the 160 GB harddrive ready to go.

Here's where things really get weird. I enter my zip code and area code and the unit successfully makes the toll-free 1-800 call to get the list of local access numbers. I pick a local access number from the screen and press select to continue - now the unit is going to go out and make the call to get the program scedule data for my local area. But immediately after I press select, the unit almost imediately give me a light blue screen for a few sec, then goes back to the very first "your recorder is starting up...just a few sec more..." screens.

Identical thing happens every time I try it, a half dozen times.

Huh. Not a motherboard problem, since the unit ran thru half the setup process; not a modem problem, since the 1-800 call went OK; maybe a corrupt operating system on my 30 GB original archival TiVo hard drive? If so, no wonder the 160 GB drive won't work...Unlikely, but still...

So here's where it gets REALLY weird. I figure SOMETHING'S wrong, either with the motherboard or the original 30GB hard drive, so I order a brand new factory sealed Series 1 Phillips 312 unit off of EBay. I figure I'm gonna use either the hard drive or the chassis unit as a replacement part.

I get this unit today via UPS. One again I try to do the mfstools transfer off of this new drive to my new 160GB hard drive I bought. Once again the 160 GB drive fails to start the system. Once again I decide I'll go thru setup with the new unit - new chassis / motherboard, new original harddrive. IT FAILS IN THE EXACT SAME PLACE IN THE SEQUENCE- AFTER MAKING THE 1-800 CALL AND WHILE INITIATING THE CALL TO THE LOCAL NUMBER.

I used qunlock on both 30 GB drives - is this possibly causing the problem? Any suggestions on how to recover from this mess?

funtoupgrade · 01-17-2006, 11:36 PM

Did you qunlock just in case or did you know for sure you needed to unlock them? I understand if you use qunlock on an unlocked drive you destroy it forever - at least that's what others on the forum have indicated. I tossed qunlock a long time ago and use diskutil instead which works better and cannot cause any problems if used on an unlocked drive.

Is there any chance there are unkown problems on your phone line? I do know the phone line can work fine for phone conversations but be too noisy or whatever for data transmission. Assuming you have not trashed all your good backups, can you try the setup at a friend's house just to elimnate a phone line problem?

rickyjames · 01-18-2006, 06:32 AM

In both cases the original TiVo drives read 10 MB in size when originally hooked up under mfstools which was the criteria for using qunlock as a step. In both cases they read 30000MB after qunlock which was exactly what they were supposed to read. One thing I am sure of about the use of qunlock, it was necessary and appeared to work fine in both cases.

My next step is going to be borrowing my daughter-in-law's TiVo from down the street (also a 312 unit which I modified) and hooking it in at my house WITHOUT CRACKING THE CASE to see if it can use my phone lines OK. At this point it seems like either trashed hard drives or bad phone line, and that phone line has always supported the 1-800 call just fine during setup multiple times.

My big mistake was not running setup on the new Ebay Tivo befre I dove right in and started playing with its hard drive. Live and learn. I will post results of trying my daughter-in-law's TiVo tonight when I get home from work.

funtoupgrade · 01-18-2006, 04:37 PM

One other thing to check for would be any wrong dialing options in the phone setup screen. I think TiVo ignors these during the 800 call but if anything is amiss there the second call will burp.