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Thread: Newbie needs help in Auckland

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Nov 2004
    Location
    Auckland
    Posts
    35

    Newbie needs help in Auckland

    Hi all,

    I must be the newest newbie in NZ.

    I got my TiVo from George on Monday and have had very little success.

    I have got the Oz image onto my drive but then I get "Error - Unable to access mfs." message when trying to install the cachecard software off floppy.

    Then, when I attempted to start over again I thought I would format the drive in PC but the 160Gb Maxtor is only being seen as 9.8Mb !

    I thought the drive had died, so I got myself a new 120Gb Maxtor and have had exactly the same sequence of results.

    I tried running the nic_install that is on the Oz Image CD but no matter what master/slave primary/secondary combination I use it never finds a TiVo hard drive.

    And yes, I did follow the instructions to boot the TiVo to the Guided setup before running the cachecard software.

    At this point - and the fact that my linux knowledge is as extensive as my knowledge of brain surgery (eg: none) I am looking for a linux experienced TiVo guru in Auckland who might come and assist a newbie and be compenstated with amber fluid or equal valued products :-)

    Cheers
    Bruce (in Albany, North Shore)
    bmc/bruce@clear.net.nz

  2. #2
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Wellington, NZ
    Posts
    477
    Quote Originally Posted by BruceC
    160Gb Maxtor is only being seen as 9.8Mb !
    Seems that the drive has been booted in a TiVo... and it looks like the TiVo has decided to "lock" it. I have not seen this happen with Seagate's or Samsung's, and running the unlock (qunlock.exe) utility on a Maxtor is a little risky.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Wellington, NZ
    Posts
    477
    Reports are that qunlock will sometimes work on a Maxtor as long as the drive had been locked by the TiVo... however, if it is run on a drive that has not been locked, then many people have reported that the drive permanently locks and can not be reset!

    The following is a link to the diskutil utility, which is a little safer to use than the qunlock utility as it checks to see that the drive was locked before doing its stuff: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...hreadid=148629

    Like I previously said... it's risky unlocking a Maxtor, but if you wish to try then the diskutil is probably the best application for you. I have no experience with Maxtor but have used it on Quantum drives.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Location
    Auckland, NZ
    Posts
    251
    Quote Originally Posted by thomson
    Seems that the drive has been booted in a TiVo... and it looks like the TiVo has decided to "lock" it. I have not seen this happen with Seagate's or Samsung's, and running the unlock (qunlock.exe) utility on a Maxtor is a little risky.
    True, DON'T run qunlock unless you want a doorstop.. run Diskutil.exe instead, it is completely safe, copy it onto a bootable DOS disk.
    http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/diskutil.zip

    EDIT: heh bet me by a minute!! Anyway I have run Diskutil Numerous times on my dual 300gb maxtor drives, works fine.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Nov 2004
    Location
    Auckland
    Posts
    35

    Smile

    Thanks guys.

    I will have a crack with DiskUtil in the morning. PC and TiVo is at work.

    I assume I use the "DiskUtil/PermUnlock DriveNo." option.

    Hopefully that puts me on the road to TiVo joy.

    Bruce

  6. #6
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Wellington, NZ
    Posts
    477
    Yes... you should be able to use the info option to list the attached drives.
    Code:
    A:\DiskUtil.exe /Info
    And then using the PermUnlock option to unlock the drive. This should unlock the drive, but will need to be performed again if you ever pull the drive out of your TiVo again, as it is very likely that the TiVo will lock the drive as soon as it is booted.

    Code:
    A:\DiskUtil.exe /PermUnlock DriveNo

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Nov 2004
    Location
    Auckland
    Posts
    35

    Smile

    Thanks guys. All worked great afterusing the DiskUtil app.

    Was pleased to know I hadn't been killing drives!

    So then I had It all set up. EXCEPT

    My clock on TiVo was out by 5 hours (eg: at 3:30pm my TiVo thinks it's 10:30am).

    I had run the settime command and the settime -rtc and rebooted, but for some reason it only came right after I pulled the plug on the power.

    I would be interested in experienced comments as to why the 4-8 hour part of the setup only took about 30min (using Full Jetstream) but all the data is there for the EPG. If from now to 16th Nov is ALL. Being new I'm not sure how far out it goes.

    Cheers,
    Bruce
    Last edited by BruceC; 04-11-2004 at 01:52 PM.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Wellington, NZ
    Posts
    477
    Quote Originally Posted by BruceC
    I had run the settime command and the settime -rtc and rebooted, but for some reason it only came right after I pulled the plug on the power.
    This seems unusual... if you wish to play with dates then I have a couple of posts on the subject. One is an
    rdate(1) implementation, and the other relates to Daylight Davings Time

    Quote Originally Posted by BruceC
    I would be interested in experienced comments as to why the 4-8 hour part of the setup only took about 30min
    The amount of time required for the database import and index is directly related to the amount of information (which, of course, is related to the number of channels and the number of days involved). A slice that has been striped to only contain Free To Air (FTA) data loads in less than two minutes. The 4-8 hours related to the US cable networks which have a large number of channels each with more than two weeks of data.

    It is normal to only have a few (4) days future guide data in the database as the broadcasters to not provide easy access to future data.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Location
    Wellington, NZ
    Posts
    573
    Isn't there another thing that has to be done, set the timezone to option '7' (GMT)?

  10. #10
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Wellington, NZ
    Posts
    477
    Quote Originally Posted by zollymonsta
    Isn't there another thing that has to be done, set the timezone to option '7' (GMT)?
    Correct... done via the "timezoneadj30.tcl" script... which should be in the /hack/bin directory on an OZTivo image. If you have a look using the MFS module via the TivoWeb interface then you will find the current settings in "/State/LocationConfig".
    [FYI: These can be found in "/Setup" for a UK (v2.5.5) system]

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