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Something I felt compelled to try... (mod)
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Posted by: Nihilator

http://www.tinsmithtech.com/graphics/tivowithdrive.jpg

Key turns TiVo on and off, and prevents the drive from being removed when the unit is on. More pics available if anyone's interested.

--Chris

Posted by: philhu

Very cool!

I am runnig my svr-2000 with a 4 foot ide cable with disk outside the box.

Easy to make changes that way :)

Your way is even better!

Posted by: Nihilator

The setup may look better than having the drive outside the box, but in terms of the pain it was to get it set up....

I went through four or five heavy-duty dremel cutting wheels to get through the metal case:
http://www.tinsmithtech.com/graphics/tivodrivebay.jpg

Most of the rest of it was easy. It will be easier to do other units now that I know where the holes should be cut, etc.

Posted by: rogo

Tres chic.

Posted by: HTH

Good color matching.

I remember reading of someone else doing this before, except that person had the removable bay on the side of the unit. Not so convenient for rack mounting. It's been too long for me to remember.

Posted by: bingoman

Awesome Chris. I have thought about doing this (I have built many Firewire enclosures for video editing using the same shuttle) but could not come up with a reason to do it. Have you found a way to "archive" TiVo recordings?

Posted by: mrmike

What's the source for the caddys?

-MM

Posted by: Nihilator

Mercy buckets.

The colors look a little different due to the flash. Looking at it in a normal room light, you can't tell the difference.

I strongly considered the side-entry approach. It would have been significantly easier, I think, and probably more aesthetically pleasing, since I wouldn't have had to cut a hole in the front of the machine. But then opening the unit would have become problematic, and besides, most of my TiVos can't be accessed from the side.

I also considered cutting the plastic front cover so that the whole right side of the cover could be lifted off, revealing the removeable tray behind it. I may try the second one like that, just to see if it looks better.

Here's another pic, this time of the power supply:

http://www.tinsmithtech.com/graphics/tivops.jpg

You're looking at the bottom of it. The grey plastic piece sticking out is where the power cord plugs in. The two wires are soldered to the points where the fuse holder is soldered in place. (I put heat-shrink tubing on them later, so not so much bare metal is exposed.) The fuse has been removed from the PS's fuse holder and placed instead in an in-line fuse holder in the middle of the red wire (not visible from this picture). The two wires lead to the switch on the front of the removeable drive's holder.

--Chris

PS-- Define "archive"?

The caddies are from CompGeeks... here. I think they were on sale when I bought six of them for $6.90 each, but now they're $7.95. I bought two blacks specifically for this project, and four whites so that I could do this:

http://www.tinsmithtech.com/graphics/tivopc.jpg

The A sled ordinarily holds a dual-boot 30GB drive with Win98 and RH8.0, but it can be removed if three drives are needed to do a TiVo upgrade.

Posted by: bingoman

I get them at Computer Geeks (computergeeks.com) They are made by Genica and they are model GN-210 (I think.) They come in Black like Chris used or beige. They cost about 7 or 8 bucks with the shuttle and 5 1/2 inch mounted enclosure. If you can't find them there, many other online places have them but they cost more.

Posted by: RC3105

quote:
Originally posted by bingoman
...Have you found a way to "archive" TiVo recordings?

search the other big tivo forum for insertion & mfs_ftp. there are 2 main archive formats - an xbox can play both formats from dvd-rw or directly from the tivo via the network - mfs_ftp runs in the tivo & lets you restore archived recordings to NowPlaying

those bays are cool, got about 2 dozen here. one problem though, the fans tend to go out after a while so keep an eye on that if you have drives that run hot (scsi, 7200 rpm, etc)

--
Riley

Posted by: bingoman

By "archive" I was trying to avoid suggesting that there might be a way to extract the recordings from the TiVo to a computer and then transcode to MPEG 2 for DVD burning.

I am in the business of film and video production and encode/author DVDs all the time...but they are my own productions. Its extracting programs from TiVo that I have note explored (for obvious reasons.) It would be interesting to explore, because I view archiving a recording from TiVo as no different than saving an OTA program to VHS. And I know there are units available now that will burn a DVD from TiVo, but that eliminates the ability to edit out commercials.

Posted by: cyconley

Sweet man. More pics of the inside and how you mounted it. Thanks

Posted by: Nihilator

quote:
Originally posted by cyconley
Sweet man. More pics of the inside and how you mounted it. Thanks

I'd love to, but there are no pics of how it's mounted...because it's not mounted. It's sort of just sitting in there on top of a single layer of cardboard, which is sitting on top of the drive mount bracket (not the one that's attached to the original drive, but the one that's mounted to the bottom of the TiVo). Friction, basically, is keeping it in place...the drive caddy is sort of wedged in.

There are a couple of other pics of the re-assembly process. I'll post those as soon as I can resize them, which won't be until I can get home and recharge my laptop's battery.

bingoman, "archiving" in that sense is a prohibited topic on these forums, so I can't discuss it here. If you haven't already, check your PMs for more information.

--Chris

Posted by: RC3105

bingoman:

the archive formats are straight 1:1 backups of the data on the tivo hd. same thing mfstools does, but you can manage individuall recordings instead of the entire drive in one lump

converting the archives to mpg is a whole nother discussion

there are serveral pc / mac / xbox apps to play the archives without any conversion. ( think of an xbox as a tivo native format enabled dvd player :D ) you can put an archive dvd in a mac/pc/xbox and play them directly or restore them to the tivo

--
Riley

Posted by: Nihilator

Three more pics, of the unit in various stages of re-assembly. Sorry for the delay; was helping my brother move yesterday. Ordinarily, that wouldn't take precedence over TiVo, except that he was the person who introduced me to it in the first place. :-)

Here's the box with just the power supply installed. Note the two wires coming from the underside of the PS, where the fuse holder is. You can also now see the red wire's inline fuse holder. The wires will connect to the switch on the drive caddy; the connections are not permanent; they're only "friction" connections, which is worrisome. If the tray were to slide forward, the wires would fall off and contact the metal case.

http://www.tinsmithtech.com/graphics/tivomod-3.jpg

Here's the box with everything installed except the IDE cable and the power cable for the drive:

http://www.tinsmithtech.com/graphics/tivomod-4.jpg

Another (good) reason for installing the tray through the plastic face of the TiVo, as opposed to just through the metal case, behind the plastic: With the drive installed flush against the case metal, the connectors at the back of the caddy push up against the daughter board on the PS. Not good. Probably not the end of the world, but installing it through the plastic faceplate gave me extra room behind the caddy.

http://www.tinsmithtech.com/graphics/tivomod-2.jpg

That's probably all of the decent photos there are. I tried to take closeup pics of the switch and the wiring around it, but they all came out blurry. Phht.

--Chris

edit: three, not four. thanks, Robert S!