Tivo freezing/hanging daily

**timl** · 10-02-2006, 02:53 PM

Thanks both!

On the ATA cable I was meaning more from a stability point of view on the balanced cabling rather than from a performance standpoint. Placing even a decent DVD-ROM drive on a controller tends to yeild a better advertised capability in the PC's BIOS setup with an 80 conductor cable than placing it on a standard 40 wire one. I was thinking that was due to better signalling integrity (ie. SNR and clocking) being seen by the drive.

I'm probably talking bollocks

I read in another thread that some (this may have been limited to UK Thomsons) had better luck/stability running 2.5.5 software than 3.0. Is that a desireable downgrade or irrelevant to a Philips US model?

I think that if from now on, I see I still have some form of management of the TiVo (since the NIC timing change) during a 'crash', that I'll write a watchdog to reboot either the whole OS or reload those components which need it. Being a relative newbie of course, I'll need to research a whole lot into the various process IDs which operate remote, UI, output video etc for the latter.

That's what this kind of a project is all about after all!

**Darren King** · 11-02-2006, 12:06 AM

Well, hey... I mean there is nothing stopping you from trying an 80-way cable and seeing if it makes a difference stability wise. It never has for me, but you may be lucky. That's what it is all about: Experimentation

But transfer wise: no. ATA-33 is about all you are ever going to get.

Just remember though that you will have to "unplug" the blocked up pin on the cable as the IDE connector on the TiVo has ALL the pins present, and not with the missing one around the middle (or thereabouts).

**timl** · 11-02-2006, 07:48 AM

Well, I'm back to square 1. Whilst trying to MFS FTP my current content from my 60GB TiVo disk on to my PC, I get the good ole Total Freeze where I can't even ping the box, so I guess the nic_config_tivo to failsafe may have done squat. I tend to get up to half a GB of data off and then the TiVo locks solid, requiring a power cycle (which I hate doing - it seems a bit harsh).

My 250GB disk arrived yesterday and I'd like to rebuild with solely that, to rule out a disk problem (and also to assist with DJC's new, new dev emulator testing). There's still some content on the 60GB I'd like to transfer over first though.

I don't see anything in the logs that ring alarm bells. I think the unit freezes at such a low level that no watchdog etc gets a chance to log anything.

Post Stop: I just tried again after a 1 hour uptime - TiVo locked up after 55MB of transfer. Time to progress with opening up the unit, cleaning the NIC contacts and replacing the disk. (Multiple changes -> poor diagnostic procedure, I know).

Darren, with your extensive hardware knowledge - do you think I am looking at a main board fault ?

**Darren King** · 11-02-2006, 06:32 PM

Have you at least tried the new hard disk "vanilla", as in no hacks just the basic setup? If not try that. If that still locks, then try unplugging the network card and see if that works.

IF, and only if, doing the above still gets you a TiVo that locks up then yes it is a motherboard problem.

**timl** · 20-02-2006, 09:03 AM

Well done Darren!

It's been long enough to say that I now have an utterly stable TiVo. Woo hoo!

I disabled Tivoweb and the (build included) FTP daemon. Life is groovy again. I don't care that I can't show off my TiVo and programme schedule via my BlackBerry any longer to friends and workmates.

I care that my machine goes about its business flicking the red Recording LED on or off from time to time recording the crap I (we) like to watch, it responds to the remote with cool boing sounds when I (we) press buttons and there's moving pictures on the tube.

As this is well and truely a production machine now - I'd be tossed out on the street before I could say, "Hey babe - what you feel like watching?" if I screwed with it any longer. So, my development/play machine is winging its way to me...

...so I can tinker again. I'd like to see if I can get Tivoweb going and see if it is just the 'phone' module that is shafting the event handler.

Happiness REALLY IS two fully operational TiVos!

**Darren King** · 20-02-2006, 09:22 AM

Good stuff

As much as people hate me saying it (I sound like a broken record!) but the first point of call with any TiVo problems is to try another hard disk. You would be amazed with how many little niggly faults are cause by either software and/or a glitchy hard disk. Overall the motherboards are very reliable. Roll on the days we get reasonable sized flashRAM "hard disks" where there is no mechanical parts

Well done in persevering. It paid off