TiVo Community Forums Archives - Problem During Upgrade-No Floppy Disk

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Problem During Upgrade-No Floppy Disk
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Posted by: direfan

Hi All,
I tried to upgrade my SVR-2000 yesterday but ran into all sorts of problems. I planned on replacing the TIVO stock drive with a Maxtor 80GB 7200 rpm drive. I have 2 computers at my disposal. Since I did not want to mess around with my new computer, I decided to use the old computer that was runnig Windows 95 and had a HD that was FAT32. SO I downloaded the reqd software from Hinsdale's site (thanks Hinsdale) connected the HD's etc. but it would not bootup with the sotware that I had burned on a CD. The software was burned on the CD as an .iso image. It kept on saying that it could not boot because of a problem in 9F whatever that meant. Will it not work on a windows 95 background?

So with much reluctance, I opened up my new computer. I connected the HD the reqd. way. Except this time I could not use the C: drive of the new computer since it is NTFS formatted. So I used another Fat 32 HD that I have as the primary as well as the TIVO HD as the slave and connected the new 80gb HD to the CD burner slot after disconnecting the burner. This time the computer booted up fine from the CD using the regular CD drive. However it showed the TIVO drive as 10gb i.e. I guess it was locked. Here is where the problem started. I needed to download qunlock but my new computer lacks a floppy. So I am now stuck as I cannot boot the computer using a floppy. I visited bootdisk.com, but it requires a floppy drive. It will not allow a download to the HD so that i can be burned to a CD. I don't know what to do. Any advice?
Will I be able to use my Windows 95 computer at all? If not, how do I go about using my new computer if it does not have a floppy? I would really appreciate any help. Thanks. :confused:

Posted by: Robert S

10Gb (Gigabytes) is not locked. That's a BIOS problem. 10Mb (Megabytes) is locked, but the CD should have unlocked it automatically.

qunlock will run quite happily from DOS mode on your Win95 machine if you can get it onto its hard drive.

Posted by: direfan

RobertS thanks for your quick reply. It was 10 mb. I apologise. That was my mistake. But it did not do it automatically.

My question is, why would the CD not boot up in my windows 95 computer? It determined a problem in "9F". So it would not recognize any of the HD's.

Posted by: Nihilator

It's not possible to move the floppy drive, at least temporarily, from your Win95 machine to your new computer? Unless you're using a specialized MB, I'm sure there's a floppy connector on there somewhere.

Or, alternatively, you could qunlock your TiVo's drive using the Win95 machine, and then use the boot CD with the new computer.

Robert is right that the TiVo hard drive should not be locked, *if* it is actually a stock Sony SVR-2000 (Quantum) drive. Your BIOS may show it to be 10MB, but did the Boot CD's drive table also show it to be 10MB? After the Boot CD has finished, uh, booting, and you're at the blank screen with the "#" prompt, use Shift-PageUP (I think) to scroll up a few pages to see each of the devices being defined. If it shows up as 10MB on that screen, you would need to use qunlock. If it shows up as 30GB, you're fine...*don't* use qunlock on any drive that doesn't need it!

--Chris

Posted by: direfan

Thanks Nihilator. My sony drive is a maxtor drive and not quantum.

As far as moving the floppy drive, the old computer was a Packard Hell and we tried to get the floppy drive out but to no avail. The innards of the Packard Bell suck.

Posted by: Nihilator

Yeah, Packard Bell used to be notorious for their proprietary components.

An original Sony SVR-2000 with a Maxtor drive would be uncommon, but towards the end of the production run, they did use those drives. Is it 40GB? or 30?

Maxtor drives will lock after being used in a series 1 TiVo; the qunlock instructions were originally added to Hinsdale's instruction manual specifically because TiVos were being shipped with drives that didn't automatically unlock when booted with Dylan's boot disk or Kazymyr's boot CD.

Qunlock should work on your drive. Because it's an older drive, you should not be in danger of permanently frying your drive by using qunlock, though.

Can you do what I suggested, and use qunlock on your old PC, then power it down and move the TiVo drive to the new PC, where you can use the boot CD?

--Chris

Posted by: direfan

Thanks once again. I will see if I can unlock it in the Packard Hell computer.

Which brings me to my next question. How do I make a boot CD? I visited bootdisk.com, but all their options to make a boot CD require a floppy.

Posted by: Nihilator

Well, when I say "Boot CD", I'm talking about Tiger's MFSTools 2.0 CD, which you've already got working.

Good luck...let us know how things are working out.

--Chris