TiVo Community Forums Archives - Snappy answers to stupid questions

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Snappy answers to stupid questions
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Posted by: embeem

What follows below is a quick attempt to answer some of the more frequent questions, it is not intended to cover the subjects in any depth.

If you see anyone asking any of these topics please refer them to this thread (and ask how they missed it in the first place ;) )

1. How do I upgrade my tivo?
There's a whole thread including an FAQ here

2. What's a tivonet and why do I need it?
It's a modification that lets you add a network card to the tivo. It's not required for any hack but it's faster than PPP over the serial port.

The tivonet is an adapter that attaches onto the motherboard of any series 1 tivo (any without usb ports) and provides a psuedo isa slot for an ne2000 network card. This is not a real isa slot, you cannot use any other isa cards without extensive changes.

A new network card has just shown up called a turbonet, which aims to be a faster and cheaper alternative to the tivonet.

3. Can I use a network card to backup my recordings?
Extraction is really overrated, it's a complex process that results in several large files that need to be reencoded as an mpeg. The results vary widely but most report problems either correctly extracting the components off the tivo or getting the syncronization right afterwards. I'm not aware of any way to get the recording back on the tivo later, nor do I know a way to watch the recordings of one tivo on another.

Bottom line: Use the 'save to vcr' option or buy a capture card for your pc and save yourself the headache and the warranty. Discussion of extraction specifics is banned in this forum.

4. What's a tivoweb?

tivoweb refers to a popular hack by ligthn (and many others) that allows you to manipulate the tivo in various ways using a webbrowser. A serial PPP or tivonet connection is required.

Further information including a demo is available on the homepage at http://tivo.lightn.org/

5. Hey! I run linux can you tell me more about which linux tivo uses?

Series1 machines (no usb ports):

Tivo uses a modified version of the 2.1.24 kernel and custom proprietary kernel modules running on a IBM PPC 403 processor running at either 54 or 72Mhz (standalone and dtv models respectively).

The linux installation is minimal at best and contains very little beyond what is required to boot and load the tivo interface.

Series2: (att boxes)

Little is known about these units other than they appear to be running a modified 2.4.4 kernel on a 200Mhz NEC MIPS VR5432 processor.

6. How can I program applications for the tivo?

Most hacks are in the form of tivosh scripts; tivosh is a variation on tclsh (8.0p2) so learning TCL is a good starting point.

It is possible to build a powerpc cross compiler and compile c applications for the tivo from another linux machine but precompiled powerpc binaries for other distrubutions of linux will not run without modifications.

7. What is a bash prompt and where do I get one?
Bash stands for Bourne-Again SHell, which is a standard linux command prompt. Having access to the bash prompt on the tivo is important as it's the basis for almost all hacks (with the exception of upgrading the disk)

There's actually two ways you can setup bash access, you can either setup bash to run directly on the serial port and just use a terminal application to control it -or- you can setup a PPP or tivonet/turbonet connection and telnet into the tivo.

Bash directly on the serial port:
Getting a BASH prompt with Dylan's bootdisk
Tivo-PPP's bash section

PPP:
Tivo-PPP for windows 9x
TiVo Updating Over Dedicated Internet HOWTO
PPP Why-to

....
65535. Hey! you didn't answer my question
Many questions can be answered quickly by using the http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/images/top_search.gif button at the top of the page, otherwise start a new thread.
The purpose of this thread is not to answer every question possible (most people would die of boredom after the 30th page)

If you feel a question absoluetly must be answered here then post it as a reply and I'll add it so it doesn't get burried under multiple pages of chatter.

65536. What's up with that sig?
It's just there to keep Dave Bott happy ;)

Posted by: bsnelson

embeem, surely you mean "65535" on that last question, unless you're planning to go to a four byte integer from two byte unsigned..

:D

Brad

Posted by: kazymyr

Well he started at 1 so it may be q-1. :)

Posted by: Saturn

This would probably be a great place to post my answer to Recap of what software does what. Some of the links are probably out of date, but I think most everything is still accurate.

There are no stupic questions, but idiots sure are inquisitive.

Posted by: Trent Bates

"There are no stupid questions..."
Are you sure??? ;)

Posted by: __sbrk

Yes, it's for the better good that we burn boo^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hban topics such as video extraction. This isn't the correct forum, however.

I'll supress my rant, but, really, that's such
a knee-jerk reaction.

ENOMEM

Posted by: stahta01

quote:
Originally posted by embeem

Series2: (att boxes)

Little is known about these units other than they appear to be running a modified 2.4.4 kernel on a 200Mhz NEC MIPS VR5432 processor.

(hey tivo, where's the 2.4.4 kernel on http://tivo.com/linux ?)

It now has Tivo_2_0.tgz Size 10+ MB ; Have no Idea whats in it.

Tim S

Posted by: embeem

quote:
Originally posted by stahta01

It now has Tivo_2_0.tgz Size 10+ MB ; Have no Idea whats in it.

Tim S

coulda sworn that wasn't there abit ago.. guess I'll edit the message.

Posted by: Worf

quote:
Originally posted by Trent Bates
"There are no stupid questions..."
Are you sure??? ;)

Yep. There's only people who refuse to take 5-15 minutes to try to find the answer they need :).

Posted by: Black_Widow000

Maybe I should take the time to make a "TiVo Fun for Dummies guide" ? or at least stop answering the questions :p

Posted by: Black_Dragon

Why not an "O'Reilly" book. I've got the cover worked out... :D
http://sapphire.indstate.edu/~hunters/images/book.png

(made at: http://www.ilbbs.com/oracovers/)
_

Posted by: Worf

What's the colophon of the fish? (Remember, all of O'Reilly books have an animal that's somewhat related to the content...).

Posted by: feldon23

Some day, the moderators will take discover the "sticky topics" button.

I use this button to great effect on my forum. The number of newbie questions is about half what it was before I added it.

Posted by: hinsdale

quote:
Originally posted by Worf
What's the colophon of the fish? (Remember, all of O'Reilly books have an animal that's somewhat related to the content...).

Interestingly enough.. the author of an OReilly book on hacking the TiVo (well actually it will cover a mulititude of different hacks) has contacted me. I will get two copies of the resulting book (sure it will be a real page turner) for my assistance.

Posted by: Black_Dragon

quote:
Originally posted by Worf
What's the colophon of the fish? (Remember, all of O'Reilly books have an animal that's somewhat related to the content...).

Really? I thought they abandoned that idea. OK, ummm...

The Anabantidae, a freshwater fish of the order Perciformes, is quite unique among ichthyoids in that it requires atmospheric air for breathing. Because of the complexity of their breathing organs, the anabantidae is also know as the labyrinth fish. Much like the Anabantidae the TiVo can seem like a complicated labyrinth, making many a newbie TiVo hacker into mouth breathers.

:D

Posted by: Otto

quote:
Originally posted by feldon23
Some day, the moderators will take discover the "sticky topics" button.

I use this button to great effect on my forum. The number of newbie questions is about half what it was before I added it.

What are you talking about? This thread *is* sticky and it was when you replied to it. :D

Posted by: WinBear

So, you are saying that the fish works over-the-AIR?

What about a fish that works with any oxygen/food source? <g>

Posted by: rlangis

quote:
Tivo uses a modified version of the 2.1.24 kernel...

Ack! The 2.1.x kernel?!? Egads, they could have at *least* used a non-development kernel. Cripes man.

Posted by: Worf

Next question - why that particular choice of kernels... (I've always wanted to know).

Posted by: embeem

I think you have to consider the fact that at the time tivo was being developed 2.1.24 was the latest kernel and they hacked it up; now it that it works they have no need to switch kernels and potentially introduce (more?) bugs.

Posted by: controlio

Then are we to assume that the Series2 TiVos use a newer kernel? USB didn't make it's way into the kernel until the 2.3.x chain.

Not to mention that I hope they used a newer 2.4.x kernel, thanks to the more efficient swap and numerous other enhancements that have been made. I never knew how nice Linux could be until I moved away from RH6.2 (and 2.2.x) and installed RH7.2 (and 2.4.x). Good lawdy it's much nicer. A little more convoluted to use (RH's fault), but for the most part I'm thoroughly happy.

Posted by: Worf

quote:
Originally posted by embeem
I think you have to consider the fact that at the time tivo was being developed 2.1.24 was the latest kernel and they hacked it up; now it that it works they have no need to switch kernels and potentially introduce (more?) bugs.

Yeah, but in that case don't you fall onto the "stable" release branch, name 2.0? Or did PowerPC support not make it into the kernel until 2.1?

Posted by: embeem

The kernel is of the unstable branch but the term unstable can be misleading; it's really more appropriate to call it a development release since this is where new features and new designs are tried out, the stable branches are generally in a feature freeze and only get security patches.

Posted by: scottjf8

make config
make dep
make bzImage
make modules

Let us know if it works.. <g>