unlikely...
Tivo s/w is very fragile... Personally, I believe this was a design choice. By making the tivo reboot at the slightest sign of an error, it's actually much hardier than most similar devices (cable boxes and other DVRs). Rather than the box sitting there, not working for hours or days until someone notices and cycles power, the tivo reboots, and in most cases, comes back and is fine. In the end, I believe that's one of the major reasons that tivo has such an excellent track record for not missing recordings (again, compared to other boxes).
Because of this, I find it VERY unlikely anybody could emulate a tivo in s/w (other than tivo itself) because of the proprietary chip(s).
A better alternative (IMHO) would be to get a working serial cable, change your password, and copy over your good/working root/kernel partitions to the alternate pair before experimenting... that way, if something goes wrong, you can just boot to the alternates.
For resetting the password, check my wiki under "before you updgrade"
Tivo s/w is very fragile... Personally, I believe this was a design choice. By making the tivo reboot at the slightest sign of an error, it's actually much hardier than most similar devices (cable boxes and other DVRs). Rather than the box sitting there, not working for hours or days until someone notices and cycles power, the tivo reboots, and in most cases, comes back and is fine. In the end, I believe that's one of the major reasons that tivo has such an excellent track record for not missing recordings (again, compared to other boxes).
Because of this, I find it VERY unlikely anybody could emulate a tivo in s/w (other than tivo itself) because of the proprietary chip(s).
A better alternative (IMHO) would be to get a working serial cable, change your password, and copy over your good/working root/kernel partitions to the alternate pair before experimenting... that way, if something goes wrong, you can just boot to the alternates.
For resetting the password, check my wiki under "before you updgrade"
