CheshireCat
06-01-2012, 11:48 AM
Well, my 2nd TiVo has stuck in the 'powering up' reboot cycle.
From my investigations, its either hard disk corruption/failure, or a power supply capacitor burnout killing the 7v line (but not the 5v line). Replacing the hard disk can be done by mailordering a pre-imaged one from the US ( http://www.weaknees.com/australia-new-zealand-tivo.php ) but this comes to about NZ$250 once you figure in postage and so on. Replacing power supply capacitors is cheaper (only a few $) but fiddly, awkward, and you need to work out which ones and so on.
Since a new TiVo can be picked up currently for <$200 I'll just do that, and keep the old one for spares. Illl see if it is the capacitors and if so then have a go at fixing.
It is worth noting there are NO TiVo service centers in NZ, only in Oz and the US, for which the postage to send it back would be prohibitive. After your 1 year warranty expires you're on your own!
Since I'm in this state, if the HDD is not damaged, I'm going to take a backup image of it for future recovery and disk replacement. Not sure of the legality of making this generally availableto people though - its only of use if you have the TiVo hardware, which means you must have a license for the software, but I doubt they'd look on it that way.
From my investigations, its either hard disk corruption/failure, or a power supply capacitor burnout killing the 7v line (but not the 5v line). Replacing the hard disk can be done by mailordering a pre-imaged one from the US ( http://www.weaknees.com/australia-new-zealand-tivo.php ) but this comes to about NZ$250 once you figure in postage and so on. Replacing power supply capacitors is cheaper (only a few $) but fiddly, awkward, and you need to work out which ones and so on.
Since a new TiVo can be picked up currently for <$200 I'll just do that, and keep the old one for spares. Illl see if it is the capacitors and if so then have a go at fixing.
It is worth noting there are NO TiVo service centers in NZ, only in Oz and the US, for which the postage to send it back would be prohibitive. After your 1 year warranty expires you're on your own!
Since I'm in this state, if the HDD is not damaged, I'm going to take a backup image of it for future recovery and disk replacement. Not sure of the legality of making this generally availableto people though - its only of use if you have the TiVo hardware, which means you must have a license for the software, but I doubt they'd look on it that way.