Your message is confusing. You don't see the boot menu over a telnet session. The boot menu is only accessible over a serial connection to the DSS prompt. Having said that...

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You don't get a bash prompt over the DSS serial port by default. You have to explicitly add something to your rc.sysinit file to enable it.

You didn't mention how you got your telnet connection working -- if you used cworley's TiVoNet floppy, it should have enabled it by default. If you did things by hand, you'll have to edit your rc.sysinit file to include the following line:

bin/bash < /dev/ttyS3 >& /dev/ttyS3 &

See the FAQ section 4.
http://www.tivofaq.com/hack/faq.html

Now if what you really meant was you don't get bash prompt on your telnet session (can you actually telnet to your TiVo's IP address???), you should have something at the bottom of your rc.sysinit file such as:

tnlited 23 /bin/bash -login &

[ November 20, 2001: Message edited by: KenNashua ]