I have the "no sound" problem

I have large drives and cachecards so anyone know of a higher rated replacement PSU?
Alternatively I could use a seperate PSU to power the hard drive on its own. Any thoughts?

It's not a big deal as I only need to reboot every few years

 

You could use any standard PC PSU for the drives, just make sure you have a common ground between the two.
I.e. 0V is the same on both.

A wire from PSU metal case to tivo metal case should be enough.

Not sure how this affects the sound problem, as I don't have a tivo with that problem to test

 

Regarding the power supply issue and ability to tweak the output has anyone considered or tested this to try and resolve the mode 0 white flashes issue?

 

Nice idea, but I think we can safely say that mode0 flashes are unrelated to voltage (stability) levels.

 

Hi, I've got 2 HDs and a cachecard, so it's not unexpected then!

Funny it's never happened to me before.

Still be nice to have a spare PSU on the shelf though.

Martin

 

If you do try an alternate psu make sure it is Energy Star 4 complaint which means it must be 80%+ efficient.

Make your TiVo green

Automan.

 

I like the idea of this. I've tried a new PSU to cure the problem on mine, but I was unsuccessful (still, nice to have a spare PSU for a rainy day )

I was just thinking that I've got one of those external USB HDD adapters that you connect 2.5" or 3.5" drives to outside of the case for test purposes. It comes with a PSU for powering the larger 3.5" drives which has got the right molex connector and it's really small - ideal to mount inside the tivo, then tap a mains feed off the back of the PSU socket.

Hmmm? ... I'm liking this more and more.

 

I've just replaced my Samsung 300GB drive with a new Hitachi 320GB drive, and now I'm getting no sound on reboot, even with the voltage upped to 5.3V.

I should have a new PSU to test soon, but I'm wondering if I should put my Samsung back in......

EDIT: OK, put the Samsung back in and sound is OK...... could this be drive related? Does the Hitachi need more juice? I might have the take the drives back - "Reason for return please sir?", "They don't work in my TiVo", "Hu?".....

 

This is quite common and is sometimes improved by a new PSU but not always. Some drives just pull too much power at startup.

The safest option (if you're really paranoid about it) is to write a script that executes after every other reboot and forces another reboot. This will mean that after every power-on the TiVo will do one soft reboot which should fix the sound if it was missing. If it reboots again for any reason, it will do so twice, but that's something you will have to live with unless you can figure out how to detect that the TiVo has been powered-on rather than soft-rebooted.

 

Does it always show "Unknown MSP product" in the log if it is booting without sound ?
I think it does, so a script would just need to for that and then reboot.

 

I guess if you delete the log after a successful (with sound) boot. Otherwise you would be picking up errors from previous reboots

 

Mike / Steve,

Can't check logs at the mo (had to deactivate my port forwarding for my PS3 - another long story).....

But, soft/warm restarts make no difference with the Hitachi drive. Looks like I'll be taking them back.

 

Checking the date/time on the log entry would solve that,

... are you going to write it or shall I ?

 

Be my guest - my tcl/bash scripting skills are very rudimentary

But if somebody would write a C# shell for the TiVo I'd be cooking on gas...

Edit: I guess that'd mean porting Vista or XP to the PPC and getting it to run on a 54mhz processor with 16mb of memory... could be a challenge...

 

Here's the promised "reboot if no sound" script:

It checks the kernel logfile for the line "Unknown MSP Product" on the last bootup,
and reboots if it sees it.

It won't reboot if your tivo has been rebooted more than 5 times in the current hour,
just in case it would never restart with sound.

./nosound.tcl

 

Would running this script possibly result in the \var partition being reinitialised due to repeated reboots?

 

It shouldn't cause that, no. But you still should have a backup of /var anyway

Tivo wipes the /var partition if it fails to bootup completely twice in succession,
- i.e if its filesystem check doesn't complete twice.

rc.sysinit.author runs after that point in the boot process.

 

Hi all,

The "no sound" problem has reappeared on my Tivo (it first happened just after I installed my Turbonet card approx. 1 year ago) but after at least 30 hard and soft reboots, it shows no sign of the sound coming back.

I therefore have what I hope is a simple question - if I purchased another Tivo, would I be able to rip out the old original drive, and replace it with my 120 Gb drive, together with my Turbonet card.

Is it that simple, or will I have to reconfigure anything. I am hoping not, because I have (had) it working just as I wanted, with a Digiguide connection so I can just right click on the program etc.

Cheers,

Gonzo

 

@mikerr

We've had overhead power line problems resulting in a several power outages that my UPS couldn't outlast. I've now got the no sound problem pretty consistently.
At some point I'll be brave and pull the TV stack apart to fiddle with the PSU but for now I assume I just binary FTP nosound.tcl into scripts and add

Code:

/var/hack/scripts/nosound.tcl &

to rc.sysinit.author ?

Cheers

AMc

 

Hi,

Its Dave from tivoland here.

I know I don't frequent the forum much these days, so much so that many users don't even know we exist anymore heheh

Anyway, I have a hardware repair that we can carry out that can cure the "no sound but recoverable with warm boot" problem about 80% of the time.

I have never really heavily publicised it because its only around 80% effective. e.g. in some cases it doesn't work, but it doesn't make the problem any worse.

I would encourage users to go down the new PSU or tweak the PSU route first and if someone really wants it done as a last resort, it is an option.

Regs
Dave.