HDR312 Success!!

Just want to thank you guys for providing a great product!! My HDR312 drive some how aquired a glitch in it where it would just reboot the TIVO over and over again. Having no backups I deceided to purchase InstantCake. I replaced the Quantum 30 gig drive with a 120 gig Maxtor, and am now up and running again with 144 hours of recording time!!!!

Thanks Again for a great inexpensive solution!!!!!!


Tallis

I have seen so many people complaining, but not taking their time and reading the directions completely. I have purchased 3 InstantCake CDs and every one worked perfectly as advertised. One was for my 2 Series 1 DirecTV TiVo's with added 9thTee card, one was for my 2 Series 2 DirecTV TiVo's and one was for my 2 HiDef DirecTV TiVo's. All worked perfectly and I thank them for all their hard work developing them. Thanks guys.

I too had a wonderful experience with Instant Cake. Users should keep the following things in mind:
[list]
[*]Read the instructions completely and throughly.
[*]Recall that when you bought the product it was advertised as an UNSUPPORTED do it yourself product (you knew what you were buying).
[*]If something goes wrong, check the forum to see if someone had a similar error instead of instantly complaining.
[*]If your problem is not described on the board, read the instructions again and try to troubleshoot a bit.
[*]If you can't get it to work ask for help on the forum. Don't complain, just ask for help.
[*]If you still can't get it to work, recall that you only paid $20.00 and that you KNEW you were buying an unsupported product when you bought it.

[/list]

I did in fact have a problem with my installation, (my computer screen output read "No operating system found"), but I tried a few things and got it to work. Thanks for a great product and as I said, even if I couldn't have got it working, I would simply accept it. The product is clearly advertised as unsupported and people always have the choice of buying one of the prepared kits on offer.

Add my voice to the list of satisfied customers. I purchased IC (Instant Cake)for a Phillips HDR Series 1. I ran the software on a 120GB drive, and now have 126 hours of storage, 111 more than the original had.

I do have a question. I notice the IC has the LBA48 support. Does this mean I can use a larger drive than the 120GB? I am wondering if a 200 or 250GB drive will work?

Excellent product

Just wanted to thank you for the exellent product. Shorted out my 30gb during and upgrade, backup wouldn't restore, downloaded your product, installed to a spare 80, and I was up again the same night. And all the extras are already loaded! And, as a bonus, the TIVO is running significantly quieter! I'm impressed! :D

Read Instructions

Having been fooling around computers for 20 years, started with a Z-80 machine with WordStar and no hard drive, I thought I couldn't make a mistake. As I was Baking my new HD10-250, I was re reading the instructions. I then realized I had set the WD 250gb original drive as a master, and not as a master with slave. I usually use Maxtor drives and they don't have a setting like that. So I moved the connector to the proper connection, re backed the two drives, and everything works perfectly.

I must ad something. Never never assume anything. I have two SD TiVo's running through a JVC switcher, and then into the Sony 65" XBR TV.
The tv worked perfectly on HD and over the air, but was black and white on the SD input, so I ASSUMED the Sony crapped. It was an s-video cable that had gone bad. I replaced it and everything is perfect.

Another Instantcake Success

Read all instructions carefully. Entire process took 30 minutes to set up, "bake" and install the new replacement drive in my Series 2 Sony SVR-3000.

Really very simple. My only error was setting up my "cake" drive on the Primary IDE instead of Secondary

This unit had already gone through two drives and I had paid Sony $120 for a repair on the first drive, and since I am out of warranty, this one would have cost $200+.

TiVo would not let me purchase a new unit from them and transfer the lifetime service on this one.

I was looking at scrapping what had become an $800+ investment after only 18 months.

Instead, for the $20 program and a $99 Hard Drive; I extended the life of this TiVo, expanded it by 50% to 137 hours max recording time, and didn't have to live without it for the 3-4 weeks for a repair.

Guided Setup a breeze - going through initial indexing now.

All in all, the best outcome considering the circumstances.

PS: Where do I see the total time available for each of the picture quality settings?

soup4you2 said:

You guys rock!

A little story first.. the other weekend i went out and bought myself a new 80gb drive to add into my tivo.. the existing 40gb drive was just not enough.. I had no fears i already hacked my tivo to use it's max potential. Well so i added the drive in did a mfsadd and all seemed to be working great until the next day when i saw all these error messages in the tverr.log. So a little annoyed that morning without having my coffee yet. i did something really stupid.. (we shall leave it at that) Well needless to say i aparently borked up my tivo really good. It would just sit there and cycle though the powering on screens.

So so i now have a $200 paper weight? Nope.. after using your instantcake CD i was able to get the tivo back up and running.. with no problems at all.. Now that i have a backup cd like this i can continue to hack my tivo w/ no remourse..

Thanks guys..! you saved my tivo! :D

For answers to commonly asked questions, please refer to the
InstantCake Instructions and Release Notes,
Official InstantCake Discussion Thread, and the
Official PTVnet Discussion Thread

Somebody please help me I can't get this thing to work. I'll ship you my brand new 250gb hard drive with the easy bake CD and $20. Someone help me out with this please. It doesn't work.

Success Baking a Cake!

I got the CD for a Humax DRT-800 and tried three different PCs, two Dells and one Compaq.

On each, I have set the CD drive as a slave and put it on the primary IDE. I hook up with new Maxtor hard drive onto the secondary IDE and make it a master. Power cables are hooked up to both of course,

I change the boot sequence so that CD is the first choice. With the CD in place, I power the machine back on. Each time, the PC says there is no bootable drive available.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks! Got 'er done. I have a 250 gb TiVo now.

Waiting on smd rework nozzle to do the prom and the rest of the job.

Even a linux impaired person like me can bake this cake!

I feel sorry for those who bought 80 hr. models for $100 more than the 40.
I only paid $100 for my drive the day after Christmas. 3+ x the space!

Happy with InstantCake

I bought the download ISO version on 1-29-05 after buying a very cheap SA S1 Philips at a pawn shop. Damn thing kept rebooting during the guided setup and some research pointed to bad drive and I learned about instant cake. That and a spare 60 gig drive I had laying around, UP AND RUNNING after some problems with my Dell (it likes cable select drives).
I am going to get a Turbonet card. Does the instant cake also include telnet and ftp services or do I need to put them in myself?
Sorry if this is covered. I never even thought of getting a tivo until I saw a very cheap one, so now of course I want to hack and learn it :)

Successfull upgrade!!!

Just wanted to let people know that the process worked the first try!
I did get the green screen of death (gsod) when starting up but after an hour I was up and running with 311+ hours of storage!!!

Thanks for the almost painless download...

Process took about 40 min to complete!

big9 :)