Picture/System Freezing

[petestrash]

Do you use IR extenders or have CFL's in the same room.

Peter.

[Darren King]

Guess I'll just have to byte(sic) the bullet and upgradefrom 1.5.x to 1.6.x

If you are worried about losing valuable programs and settings then why not try a test hard disk first as Peter has suggested? That way you can compare one to the other and then only reimage if you then find out it is software related. Anything from 5GB and up will do as a test. There *are* situations a failing part on the motherboard can cause lockups (usually the MPEG encoder chip) that do get worse over time. A test hard disk will reveal whether there is a software or hardware problem without the gripes of losing valuable recordings.

[ibart]

The plot thickens for me. After my earlier posts about my Series 1 Tivo freezing, and having reported that I could not change the nic speed (via nic_config_tivo) I decided to bite the bullet and start again.

New 320 gig hard drive. New downloaded Oztivo image. Fitted it up, GS ran perfect, program guides appeared real quick. Rebooted out of maintenance mode.

Next morning the Tivo had ..... frozen. Rebooted, went to work, came home. Tivo had .... frozen.

Decided to change nic speed (set at 16 when I imaged), and ... I cannot change it!!! Stuck on 16.

Could this be the Turbonet failing? If so, can I get another one in OZ?

Cheers

[petestrash]

I would suggest you unplug the network cable (you should have a weeks data now), and see if you still get frequent freezes.

If you don't then maybe try a different cable/port/joiner.

If you do then remove the network card and try again.

If you still do, then as Darren has said there are mainboard faults that could be causing the problems.

Peter.

[ibart]

Many thanks for your advice. After testing this last week or so, it appears that Tivo does not like my wired network? I had it plugged into a wireless bridge then moved it to a wired switch which worked for a couple of months but no longer.

I have tried 2 different switches (1 a gigabit, the other a 10/100) with the same consequence - the Tivo freezes (does not seem to be necessarily related making a call by the way - its more random). I have also tried 2 different Turbonet cards (I forgot I had a spare) - same thing.

I guess I should be happy all is working again via wireless bridge.

Cheers

[Darren King]

Glad to hear you narrowed it down and have a sort of "fix".

Did you ever check that the actual oztivo.conf file in the /etc directory has the line "timing=16" regardless of what you saw during setting up the hard disk via the installer menu? Usually a network freezing is because the timing setting still has a value of 3. Just makes me curious as I've never seen this behaviour once the value is set to 16.

[ibart]

Thanks for replying Darren - this has certainly got me beat. nic config is as follws, seems OK?

nic=TurboNet
ip=DHCP
mac=00:0B:AD:17:31:27
timing=16
hostname=oztivo
emulator=www.oztivo.net
emulatorport=80
netmask=
gateway=
ssid=
wep=
wepkey=

My network is kind of complicated - 1 have 9 pcs on the network plus, wii, xbox 360, 2 print servers, hd dvd player, VOIP adapter - all via 6 switches, WAP and router. Just had to change router which first stopped DNS services then DHCP stopped. New router fixed a load of strange things that were happening, but not the tivo. Ah well, as you say at least its working.

BTW have you tried the new Tivo yet?

Cheers

[Darren King]

That's strange given the timing is set to 16.... but then again that's not what most would call a normal home network either Better off just leaving it while it is working!

Yes I've had a "touch and feel" with the TiVoHD. Impressive unit but at present the Series 1 coupled with a FTA digital STB does me fine as I don't watch a lot of TV, and tend these days to download a lot of the shows I want to watch that are either delayed or not shown locally.

[ibart]

Freezing agin - with my wireless bridge this time therefore I'm back to where I started. It was OK for about a week or so.

Any suggestions gratefully received. One question I still have however, is that I still cannot change nic setup via nic config program, reports file not found. Is there any danger that my oztivo.conf file reports a state but the turbonet is not using the data, ie is actually in a different state (ie speed is still at 3)?

Cheers

[petestrash]

You can pickup a copy of nic_config_tivo here.

But as far as oztivo.conf goes it is definitely read from there. All nic_config_tivo does (in this instance) is change oztivo.conf manually.

You should now have data through to Friday, so maybe test what is causing the freeze by removing the TurboNet card all together for a few days.

Peter.