Can a tivo be used in NZ with serial cable only

[hh75]

I've just got a 120Gb refurbished Philips series 1 from Poweron.com (Possibly the first in Nelson, NZ?!)

Questions:
1) it has a 120GB drive with a new US image - given that it is 'working' and setup for this new big drive does it still have to be reformated with the Oz image, and if so can someone please explain why exactly?

2) Assuming I do whatever is necessary for question 1; I have a null modem serial cable - is it possible to get past the Guided Setup, and load files and guide slices etc. only using the serial cable?

Rgds Halfdan

[timmy]

<nasty>
ugh...

I'm not going to lambast you, quite possibly because I already sent you an email earlier, haha.

Seriously, NZ Tivo is a hobbyist activity, you can't expect to just have the cake all ready to eat my friend... Read the oztivo howto's, they cover these kinds of questions.
</nasty>

[jaidev]

does it still have to be reformated with the Oz image, and if so can someone please explain why exactly?

2) Assuming I do whatever is necessary for question 1; I have a null modem serial cable - is it possible to get past the Guided Setup, and load files and guide slices etc. only using the serial cable?

Rgds Halfdan

1. Yes it does, as the original image is a US one for the *REAL* TiVo service, obviously we don't have the real TiVo service here, so you need to load an image that has all the hacks loaded onto it etc... It's a hell of a lot easier than loading all the hack utils yourself, and going through guided setup yourself.

2. When you load the oztivo image it is already past guided setup.
Yes you can use the serial to load files and guide slices, read the oztivo serialppp howto (http://minnie.tuhs.org/twiki/bin/view/Howtonetwork/SerialPPPWithXP)

[timmy]

very diplomatic and PC Jaidev. nice one...

man i'm just a cranky boy today :mad:

[brucer]

re the serial cable, I used serial while I was waiting for the turbonet card (fyi the serial cable that comes with some Phillips Pronto remotes works perfectly) and it worked great, didn't even seem especially slow.

[zollymonsta]

very diplomatic and PC Jaidev. nice one...

man i'm just a cranky boy today :mad:

Cranky boy! Cranky boy! :D ;)

Brucer: you'll find it difficult to do some stuff, well, not difficult but painfull slow... such as retrieving video off it if you decide to. turbonet card = *drool*

;)

Cheers,
ZollyMonsta

[brucer]

hi zolly, I actually use a turbonet card attached to a wireless bridge :cool: but my point was serial PPP is definitely good enough to get a basic TIVO up and running.. bruce

[curto]

Bottom Line. Serial is fine for everything unless you want to do video extraction or video on to the TIVO from your PC.

regards

Craig

[Brandoo]

re the serial cable, I used serial while I was waiting for the turbonet card (fyi the serial cable that comes with some Phillips Pronto remotes works perfectly) and it worked great, didn't even seem especially slow.

Hey there :)

I hacked up a serial cable last night (what a mission! Long story!) and am using Hyperterminal for talking with the TiVo.

Hyperterminal (my config anyways) doesn't recognise the carriage returns and I cand find a way to turn on the echo.

Can you recommend a better terminal program?

[brucer]

I use this free telnet client http://putty.obengelb.de/

[Brandoo]

The version of PuTTY I have installed doesn't allow you to connect through COM1.

Is there sumthing here I'm missing ?

[timmy]

tera term pro works for me. great freeware terminal app...

[brucer]

The best way to use the serial connection is to setup a PPP connection.. this allows you to do everything you can do with a turbonet card ..

If you have Windows XP it's easy:

http://minnie.tuhs.org/twiki/bin/view/Howtonetwork/SerialPPPWithXP

[Brandoo]

I started trying the PPP over Serial last night but had some issues with routing :/

It was working fine but then after a reboot the TiVo decided it needed to dial up to fix itself (3 hour phone call).

I'm guessing it was something with one of the edits to rc.sysinit so will restore again when I get home and hopefully have a TiVo going tonight.