Parts replacement or time for new unit (Series 1)?

1984 Views 14 Replies 6 Participants Last post by replaytv, Mar 16, 2011

COLD_MAN

Discussion Starter · Mar 11, 2011

Hello all, 'first post after a ton of reading here & need help (I'll try to be a concise as possible).

My Phillips Series 1 woke me up at 2:00AM with the hard drive "clunking" once every few minutes.
I got up and unplugged it until morning.

I plugged it back in, and here's what it does - NOT MUCH.

1. Green front panel light is on.
2. Fan runs (5V and 12V are "live" & avail. from power supply).
3. Hard drive (40GB Hitachi "deathstar") does not spin up (doesn't spin up when connected to a PC either, but the LED blinks 10x, pauses & repeats).
4. RF port now passes a signal directly with no menu, etc. whether unit is plugged in or not, whether the hard drive is connected or not.
5. If I view the S-Video connection, the screen has the message telling me to wait while the TiVo starts up (which never changes).

Before I start testing and buying some stuff (drive, images, etc.), does this sound like the entire unit is pooched

down

, or is this just how they act when the hard drives go kablooey

up

?

Any help is appreciated (links to threads are good too, as I couldn't seem to put together the right search terms to get the answer I need).

Thanks much!

1 - 15 of 15 Posts

lrhorer

· #2 · Mar 11, 2011

It definitely sounds like a bricked hard drive. Whether anything else is also toast is questionable, although your description sounds much like a TiVo whose hard drive is dead, but is otherwise functional, for what it's worth. The blank RF output is a bit puzzling.

An S1 TiVo is a pretty old piece of equipment. If it were functional and still met your needs well, then I would agree that choosing to not replace it would be a reasonable decision. If you can easily afford an upgrade, then if you ask me the only reason to try to resurrect the S1 is the fun of tinkering with a box whose total death (in the event of a bad mistake) is of almost no consequence. If you do find that sort of tinkering to be fun (I do, myself), then at most you are only risking a few $, and there is a reasonably good chance of success. If you think the experience would be more tedious or painful than fun, then I see no reason to continue down the resurrection path.

lillevig

· #3 · Mar 12, 2011

You don't say whether or not this is a lifetime unit. If so, then I'd say it was worth trying a new hard drive as a minimum. I've used the free program WINMFS and an IDE to USB cable to image drives for my Series 1 Tivos. Sounds like you have already found a connection method for the drive so all you would need is another IDE drive and an image. Let me know if you want to give it a try and we can work out how to get you a copy of the image I use from my original Philips 14 GB box. For WINMFS the new drive needs to be bigger than the one the image was taken from and I think the largest size a Series 1 can handle is 160 GB.

COLD_MAN

Discussion Starter · #4 · Mar 12, 2011

Thanks for the fast replies!
By what you've both posted, it looks like I may be in better shape than I expected. I would like to hang onto this unit, as it is the very early model that allows manual recording.
I guess I'll shoot for a drive replacement first (I've already secured both a 40 and an 80GB drive for the project).

lillevig: if you think the WINMFS program would help, I'd be happy to accept. You could send it to me via transferbigfilesdotcom (moderators-pls. edit if it's not OK to name the website) if you want.

Let me know & I'll PM an e-mail address for the file notice.

unitron

· #5 · Mar 12, 2011

lillevig said:
You don't say whether or not this is a lifetime unit. If so, then I'd say it was worth trying a new hard drive as a minimum. I've used the free program WINMFS and an IDE to USB cable to image drives for my Series 1 Tivos. Sounds like you have already found a connection method for the drive so all you would need is another IDE drive and an image. Let me know if you want to give it a try and we can work out how to get you a copy of the image I use from my original Philips 14 GB box. For WINMFS the new drive needs to be bigger than the one the image was taken from and I think the largest size a Series 1 can handle is 160 GB.

Once you do the LBA48 patch (copykern), I know a Series 1 will do one or two 500GB drives, and I suspect they'll do 1TB drives as well.

Edit to add, I suspect they'll do 1TB drives as well IF YOU USE ONE OF THE THREE KNOWN TO WORK SATA TO IDE ADAPTERS.

Further edit: lloydjs has a 1TB working in a Sony S1

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8378361#post8378361

unitron

· #6 · Mar 12, 2011

COLD_MAN said:
Thanks for the fast replies!
By what you've both posted, it looks like I may be in better shape than I expected. I would like to hang onto this unit, as it is the very early model that allows manual recording.
I guess I'll shoot for a drive replacement first (I've already secured both a 40 and an 80GB drive for the project).

lillevig: if you think the WINMFS program would help, I'd be happy to accept. You could send it to me via transferbigfilesdotcom (moderators-pls. edit if it's not OK to name the website) if you want.

Let me know & I'll PM an e-mail address for the file notice.

You can get WinMFS (runs inside Windows) from mfslive.org, as well as the MFS Live cd v1.4 (you use it to boot the computer to a Linux command line interface)

What he's talking about sending you is an image of the Tivo drive itself (with all the empty space squeezed out). Although MFS Live and Win MFS are from the same guy, each uses its own flavor of backup image, so you have to have the right one for whichever of them you use, or be prepared to use either, depending on which you need for the image you get.

You should go ahead and download the Live cd anyway and burn yourself a copy, it's handy to have on hand.

lillevig

· #7 · Mar 13, 2011

COLD_MAN said:
lillevig: if you think the WINMFS program would help, I'd be happy to accept. You could send it to me via transferbigfilesdotcom (moderators-pls. edit if it's not OK to name the website) if you want.

Let me know & I'll PM an e-mail address for the file notice.

I wanted to take this offline so I sent you a PM a couple of days ago. Did you get it?

COLD_MAN

Discussion Starter · #8 · Mar 14, 2011

Thank you all for the assistance in this! (especially liliveg, who was willing to go the extra mile and share a clean drive image)

I bit the bullet and got a copy instantcake (time was of the essence), imaged the replacement drive and installed it.
It booted right up to a factory state with the RF ports working again, dialed in to TiVo to update itself & works fine.

Now, I'll be sure to create an image of the drive on my Series 2 unit for when THAT goes belly-up!

Thanks again.

replaytv

· #9 · Mar 14, 2011

I feel that the older series 1s are worth keeping running because they still can update the time through Tivo and not get shutoff for recording, and not have to pay a monthly fee.
If anyone else has a old Tivo please don't through it in the trash. People will still use them even though I know that most of U wouldn't use anything less than a HD capable unit. There are us cheapskates(unemployed some of us) that are still using Series 1s and 2s and don't even have a HD TV yet. We're a pathetic lot, but we are out there. ;-P
And there are even people like me that don't have cable or Dish, and only get TV off of antenna! Talk about dark ages!!

I have even run into people that are still using VCRs, and amazed that I can't convince them to at least use a Series 1 Tivo to replace that VCR. I guess that I am not the salesman that I think that I am.

unitron

· #10 · Mar 14, 2011

replaytv said:
I feel that the older series 1s are worth keeping running because they still can update the time through Tivo and not get shutoff for recording, and not have to pay a monthly fee.
If anyone else has a old Tivo please don't through it in the trash. People will still use them even though I know that most of U wouldn't use anything less than a HD capable unit. There are us cheapskates(unemployed some of us) that are still using Series 1s and 2s and don't even have a HD TV yet. We're a pathetic lot, but we are out there. ;-P
And there are even people like me that don't have cable or Dish, and only get TV off of antenna! Talk about dark ages!!

I have even run into people that are still using VCRs, and amazed that I can't convince them to at least use a Series 1 Tivo to replace that VCR. I guess that I am not the salesman that I think that I am.

If a VCR dies you can watch the tapes you made on it on another VCR. If an S1 dies you need to have done a bunch of "hacking" that's beyond the average owner to have saved the shows anywhere other than on the now-dead S1.

shwru980r

· #11 · Mar 14, 2011

I think you probably could have just bought another S1 or a Toshiba S2 with Tivo basic for what you paid for instant cake and a new hard drive.

COLD_MAN

Discussion Starter · #12 · Mar 15, 2011

shwru980r said:
I think you probably could have just bought another S1 or a Toshiba S2 with Tivo basic for what you paid for instant cake and a new hard drive.

Show me the way and I'll buy it right now (but it has to be less than $39.99 as I got the hard drive for free)!

lillevig

· #13 · Mar 15, 2011

unitron said:
If a VCR dies you can watch the tapes you made on it on another VCR. If an S1 dies you need to have done a bunch of "hacking" that's beyond the average owner to have saved the shows anywhere other than on the now-dead S1.

I'm one of those old (former) VCR users. Still have a couple but one is just so that my wife can play her exercise videos. I've tried to convince her to let me burn them all to DVD but to no avail. Anyway, my relatively recent foray into the Tivo world has been very educational. I have yet to find anything that I want to keep a recording of so its not an issue for me. My most recent acquisition was an HD unit which does allow ethernet transfer to my computer but I also have kept two Series 1 lifetime units for use in secondary locations. They may only be SD but I think even my wife has come to appreciate the advantages of setting up Tivo recordings over VCR recordings. If need be, I can run the Series 1 Tivo composite output into my laptop to capture recordings.

unitron

· #14 · Mar 16, 2011

lillevig said:
I'm one of those old (former) VCR users. Still have a couple but one is just so that my wife can play her exercise videos. I've tried to convince her to let me burn them all to DVD but to no avail. Anyway, my relatively recent foray into the Tivo world has been very educational. I have yet to find anything that I want to keep a recording of so its not an issue for me. My most recent acquisition was an HD unit which does allow ethernet transfer to my computer but I also have kept two Series 1 lifetime units for use in secondary locations. They may only be SD but I think even my wife has come to appreciate the advantages of setting up Tivo recordings over VCR recordings. If need be, I can run the Series 1 Tivo composite output into my laptop to capture recordings.

The issue isn't stuff you want to keep a recording of, it's stuff you want to keep a recording of until you get to watch it for the first time.

No point recording it if you don't ever get to watch it.

replaytv

· #15 · Mar 16, 2011

The price of a DVD burner Toshiba with basic lifetime is so cheap on ebay it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend a lot of money on fixing a series 1 tivo except if U have to have the full lifetime experience.
I still can't pry my 'significant others' ' DVD burner Toshiba with basic lifetime away from her even though I have offered her a Humax with DVd burner with full lifetime. She chased me around the living room with a frying pan until I promised I wouldn't touch her Toshiba. Buying her that Toshiba was the best money I have ever spent him my whole lifetime. She is crazy about it!

1 - 15 of 15 Posts

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