TiVo Community Forums Archives - TiVoNet

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TiVoNet - What's Needed? Really.
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Posted by: Marconi

I've tried, twice now, to get my 9th Tee, assembled and tested TivoNet board with preconfigured Ethernet card to work. The instructions at 9th Tee say that by using Chris Worley's TiVoNet Floppy, you can avoid the whole serial port/bash prompt business. So, this is the method I chose to use: pop the A drive into my PC, boot with Dylan's Boot disk, switch to the Worley TiVoNet Floppy and follow the directions to run the script. That should be all that's required, right?

Of course, along the way I've learned that I had to use the qunlock utility before the scrips would stop getting errors. And I had to figure out whether partition 4 or 7 was present, since both are not, and use the correct modified version of Worley's script.

And I worked through all that, each time I hit a wall or encountered a problem, it was back to this forum for another search and to find another piece of the puzzle. I was finally able to get past running the TiVoNet floppy script without errors.

Unfortunately, when I put the drive back into the TiVo and powered on with the TiVoNet card and Ethernet board installed, TiVo went into a continuously rebooting cycle. Again. (See my note of 1-3 at <http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v...&threadid=37556>)

Does the Worley TiVoNet floppy install 8390.o and tivone.o? Or, having run the floppy script, do I still have more work to do?

I could really use some help here. First, of course, I need to get TiVo to stop endlessly rebooting...

Posted by: stevel

For me, I followed the instructions to insert the adapter and card, ran the Worley script, and then I was on the air. One thing to note is that the Worley script assumes that you have a Linksys router or at least that your subnet is 192.168.1.*. If your setup is different, you may need to edit the IP address in the script.

As for continual reboot, clearly something went wrong, but it's hard to know what. All I can say is that "it worked for me".

Posted by: Marconi

quote:
Originally posted by stevel
For me, I followed the instructions to insert the adapter and card, ran the Worley script, and then I was on the air. ...

That was it? Ten Worley script installed everything needed? Run the script and reinstall the A drive into TiVo?

quote:
Originally posted by stevel
One thing to note is that the Worley script assumes that you have a Linksys router or at least that your subnet is 192.168.1.*. If your setup is different, you may need to edit the IP address in the script.

I edited the script as necessary to use the IP address I reserved for TiVo and to point to my NAT router as the gateway.

quote:
Originally posted by stevel
As for continual reboot, clearly something went wrong, but it's hard to know what. All I can say is that "it worked for me".

The unexpected thing, for me, was that after installing the Ethernet card and TiVoNet adapter, and before doing any of the software install, it did the same thing -- rebooted continuously, until I removed the TiVoNet and it dialed in and managed to fix itself. I am beginning to wonder if this "assembled and tested" TiVoNet board is good or not.

Can anyone else comment? Suppose you install a TiVoNet board into a SA TiVo and do nothing else. (No software install at all.) What happens?

Posted by: stevel

Yes, just ran the Worley script and remounted the disk. That was all.

If you install the TiVoNET card and don't install the software, then it's as if there was no card - TiVo ignores it. In fact, that's how my SVR-2000 is running right now, because I haven't gotten "a round tuit" to reinstall the software after the 2.5.1a upgrade.

If simply inserting the card causes the reboots, then you probably don't have a software problem (I say probably because if the drivers are incorrectly installed, I could see that they might be troublesome.) My "assembled and tested" card from 9thTee worked fine. You may want to verify that you've installed it correctly. Try it first without the network card plugged in. Make sure the power connector is oriented properly (and snip the 12V wire as the instructions suggest). Does the LED on the TiVoNET card light?

Now add the network card - does its LED light?

I'm not going to be much help on the software configuration side, others will have to help with that.

Posted by: Marconi

quote:
Originally posted by stevel
Yes, just ran the Worley script and remounted the disk. That was all.

If you install the TiVoNET card and don't install the software, then it's as if there was no card - TiVo ignores it.

That was what I thought it would do. Instead, I got the continuously rebooting problem.

quote:
Originally posted by stevel
If simply inserting the card causes the reboots, then you probably don't have a software problem ... Try it first without the network card plugged in. Make sure the power connector is oriented properly (and snip the 12V wire as the instructions suggest). Does the LED on the TiVoNET card light? Now add the network card - does its LED light?

Yes, I was careful to snip the yellow wire. The only thing I did differently was to install the TiVonet adapter and card simultaneously. The rebooting started.

After letting TiVo reboot itself continuously for nearly 20 hours, I pulled the plug this morning. Then, after a while, on a hunch**, I plugged it back in and again got the "Severe Error" screen telling me to, once again, don't touch anything for 24 hours. Much to my surprise, TiVo restarted shortly thereafter.

Then I powered down and installed just the TiVoNet adapter board and restarted. No continuous rebooting. Powered down again and installed the Ethernet board and once again, TiVo restarted properly. Since I had run the Worley script (modified) just before the latest marathon rebooting, I connected a Cat 5 cable and pinged the TiVo. Much to my surprise, the Ethernet is alive and well. I telnetted to TiVo and found that this too worked. Whew! I can hardly believe my luck.

**Here's what I think happened:
When I installed the TiVoNet board and Ethernet card, I used a power cable Y-type adapter purchased from 9th Tee to power the TiVonet board. I had previously installed another Y adpater to power the second drive when I installed it a few months ago.

As I installed the TiVoNet hardware the other day, the only other thing I changed was to remove the previously-installed power Y adapter that I'd used for the second drive. I'd done this because, in the process of installing TiVoNet and its Y adapter, I discovered that there was an unused power plug -- TiVo original equipment -- buried in the bundle of wires, so the Y adapter I'd added with the second drive was unnecessary.

So, I switched the A drive over to the spare, original Y adapter and removed the one I'd added previously. This morning, on the chance that there was something wrong with the original A drive power plug, to which I switched as I installed the TiVoNet, I decided to reinstall the power Y adapter I'd used originally and unplug the TiVo original plug that was powering the A drive. In the process of reconnecting everything, the red wire pin in the Y adapter provided by 9th Tee came out of the plug shell and had to be reinserted. This, surely, had to have been the problem.

Everything pointed to a hardware problem and a poor or intermittent power connection surely falls into that category. Although the lights on the TiVoNet board and Ethernet card were lit, something was wrong with the power. I can think of no other explanation.

Posted by: dwight

Does anyone know of a source for a Hinsdale-like guide to installing and configuring TivoNet? I've done a fair amount of PC assembly/upgrade tasks (I replaced the married original drives in my SA Tivo a couple weeks ago with a 120GB Maxtor - went great!), but Linux is pretty much a complete unknown to me.

Short of becoming conversant in Linux (something I plan to do eventually, but don't have time to do properly right now), a cookbook-like guide for installing and configuring TivoNet would seem like my best option.

Any guidance/direction that can be offerred will be greatly appreciated!

Posted by: c3

I don't think it can get much easier than the TiVoNet floppy. Edit the script with a few settings, boot up with Dylan's boot disk, and run the script. That's it.

Posted by: TxPres

Marconi,
One other thing you might try. Sometimes the Ethernet card can reset itself to IRQ 3, instead of the IRQ5 that 9th Tee set it to.
Don't know why this happens, but it did happen to me. I installed the board in my computer and ran the floppy program that came with the board and reset the IRQ to 5. Then, everything worked fine. Might be worth a shot.
TxPres