Cachecard

[tonys]

As I'm about to put a new drive in my Tivo, was wondering whether to upgrade from the current Turbonet card to a cachecard...not a cheap operation, US$99 for the card plus US$40 for shipping...any comments as to how worthwhile the change would be?

[petestrash]

You see a noticeable increase in the speed that the now playing list fills (with 512mb), and a slight increase in FTP speed.

You also get a small speed boost going from older 2Mb caches to 8+Mb's in today's drives.

So you may be better off waiting till after the upgrade to see what improvement you get just from the drive.

Peter.

PS don't buy WD Caviar Blue as they don't work in S1's.

[catdog]

Keep your money. There is a small difference in speed, but it is not worth spending that much if you already have a working Turbonet in your Tivo.

Also, my cachecard (v2.2) caused a bug where one of the IC's doesn't always initialise when the tivo boots resulting in no sound. I use a script to detect this if it happens, and the uptime is usually quite long between restarts any way, but it is still annoying.

My 2c

[Darren King]

Keep your money. There is a small difference in speed, but it is not worth spending that much if you already have a working Turbonet in your Tivo.

I have to agree with this comment. Also that adding 512MB of DRAM that requires constant refresh to keep the memory alive (this is a "hidden" process a user is not aware of) sucks power. All of which is an added strain on the power supply that is not warranted for a small speedup of the "now playing" list.

Also don't forget the cachecard is unpopulated in memory. You still need to buy a memory module if you do not have one laying around.

[tonys]

Seems I've just saved US$140! Cheers guys! Covers some of the pain of paying Weaknees US$200 for a 500gig Seagate DB35 HDD (the ones that are apparently specificaly made for DVR applications)

[tonys]

Got an email telling me that Darren had replied to the above, but his reply doesn't show up on the forum!


Quote (Originally by tonys)---
Covers some of the pain of paying Weaknees US$200 for a 500gig Seagate DB35 HDD (the ones that are apparently specificaly made for DVR applications) ---End Quote--- Just wondering why you would have gone to the trouble and extra expense when suitable "rugged" rated hard disks can be purchased locally? Like for example a Western Digital WD10EAVS 1TB hard disk for around $120AUD


Anyway Darren, the reason I went with the overpriced Seagate was because I'd read elsewhere on the forum that there was a compatability problem with WD drives. I started a thread asking about suitable HDD's but didn't get much in the way of replies. So I'm stuck with the Seagate now!

Just done a quick google on the WD drive that Darren mentions and it appears to be SATA!!!!!

Maybe someone could start a thread listing currently available, known to be compatible IDE/PATA drives for series 1 TiVos?

[petestrash]

I think Darren may have gotten you mixed up with someone who wanted to upgrade their TiVo HD, which is why he recommended that drive.

In the link I included in my post it lists some of the drives not to buy.

This includes the newer Seagates becasue most of them cannot be used in dual drive configuration (not an issue if you don't want to use duals in the future). But the superseeded DB35 you bought might still be ok for dual use.

Unfortunately you are in NZ (should add that to your profile), and most of us are in Australia. We have sites like staticice.com.au here to find competitive prices on drives, around $130 for 500Gb PATA drives. But we don't know what you have in NZ.

It seems there are only a few NZ users who offer support on this forum, and none replied to your earlier thread.

Peter.

[Darren King]

Got an email telling me that Darren had replied to the above, but his reply doesn't show up on the forum!

Correct. That is because I withdrew my comment and deleted the message after realising we are talking about an old PATA interface TiVo and not SATA as the TiVoHD is.

I am well aware of the difficulties with keeping a Series 1 TiVo alive and unfortunately the drying up of hard disks will be the thing that will ultimately kill them off unless someone comes across a compatible PATA-SATA adaptor - or designs one - as all on the market at present are not compatible with a TiVo. I don't like the chances of either quite frankly given the very limited market of Series 1 compatibility which is in decline now the TiVoHD is here in Australia.

Still maybe an upside to your purchase of a Seagate is that you will be assured with extended service given Seagate offers a 5 year warranty on their drives. You'll have to check that one however as I'm not completely sure if that extends to the DB35 series (most likely it does) and also it is dependent on how old the stock is at Weaknees given the warranty is from date of manufacture not purchase. You can check this on www.seagate.com anyway once you have the drive and know the serial number.

[catdog]

Unfortunately you are in NZ (should add that to your profile), and most of us are in Australia. We have sites like staticice.com.au here to find competitive prices on drives, around $130 for 500Gb PATA drives. But we don't know what you have in NZ.

In NZ, at least for computer hardware, we have http://www.pricespy.co.nz


Edit: A quick search shows that you could have got the 500GB DB35 locally for NZ$229 here

[tonys]

Biggest problem with the NZ suppliers and to an extent the Oz ones too, is that their websites list all sorts of stuff and it's only when you order that you find they don't actually hold stock, then they go to their supplier who doesn't have stock either, then you find the manufaturer has discontinued the product.......I've wasted three weeks playing that game already! That's why I gave up and paid Weaknees thier asking price! In my searching I did find a supplier in the States offering packs of 20 Seagates DB35's in PATA/IDE. Maybe a group buy could be organised? Anyone interested in securing drives for the future? I've got a mate in the US who would deal with the purchase and ship to NZ.....if enough people were to front up with some cash, I'd be happy to organise it.