spaceranger said:

I bought the disk w/enhancements two days ago on recommendation of folks at DDB to upgrade my tcd540040. Since I know nothing of linux, the changes
you mentioned in the top thread are greek to me. Can I get a disk that's been corrected? Or should I have bought InstantCake?

First, I want to upgrade (replace) my 40gb drive with a Maxtor 250 gb.
Then I want to add hacks such as telnet, tivowebplus, etc..
I've read that you can't add the hacks effectively without replacing the prom.
My main objective is to be able to add a .tcl file to allow tivo to control my
oddball sat receiver(change channels).

Where do I go from here?

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

spaceranger said:

As far as networking, the last post in this thread at DDB:
http://dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?t=36801&page=1&pp=15
seems to indicate that no unencrypted files can be transferred over a network
at this time. The same thread also implies (in a link, and in attached prom files) that the unit can be "compromised" by patching the prom to be able to
insert hacks of whatever nature (including killhdinitrd?) but it is not plain
(at least to me) which hacks will work. Do you know which do or don't?

Your page indicates that PTVupgrade w/enhancements disk is useful for this model (tcd540040), presumably to add hacks. Is this correct?

From reading the instructions for Instant Cake, it appears one would need no
knowledge whatsoever of linux, but simple hardware skills. I have those.
It appears that this disk would automate, using scripts, preparation of an upgraded (in my case, a 250gb) drive for my tivo. Is this correct?

Is InstantCake what I should have bought instead of PTVupgrade w/ enhancements?
Or will they both be useful to me?
Will I be able to get a new PTV disk when the issues in the thread you posted
are resolved?

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

spaceranger said:

I guess the issue to be resolved is as you said (and I'm not ctiticizing):
"Boot-time Decision

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We made a change to this CD from the older 3.01 CD and I'm not sure whether it was the right thing to do. At boot time, the default boot configuration is "swap" mode, which looks like this:

default vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img hdb=bswap hdc=bswap hdd=bswap load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 rw root=/dev/ram

This may result in some problems with the mfsrestore operation of certain backup images. The restore will appear to complete with no problems, however, a newly restored drive will "hang" in the TiVo at boot time. There are two "workarounds" for this issue:

Alternative 1: At boot time, use the "noswap" option

Alternative 2: When using mfsrestore, use the "-b" flag to turn off byte-swapping.

If folks think the default boot sequence should be reversed to be this:

default vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 rw root=/dev/ram

Please let me know, but also keep in mind that this could cause other problems with utilities which need to read disk partition information and won't be able to do so in "swap" mode.

Lastly, the ideal situation in my perspective, would be to have an lba48 kernel for the CD which supports ide=nodma; if anyone has access to a kernel we can try, I'd appreciate that."


Since my tivo is said to have built in LBA48 support, will that affect me?
Aside from that, I imagine the PTVupgrade disk will be appropriate for my box.
I wasn't asking for a refund...

Since your InstantCake disk makes a drive equivalent to the one you sell,
and you wouldn't sell drives if they were likely to go belly up with someone's
movie collection on them, I guess that would be the way to go. That would seem to solve the tivo storage issue. You do seem to have a great support forum in case I screw up, but it looks really easy.

Thanks!

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

spaceranger said:

I received the InstantCake disk yesterday. Thanks for the quick service!
Several friends are waiting for me to do mine before doing theirs.

Does my cd (540040) support all the following models:
TiVo TCD130040 [4.0-xx-x-130]
TiVo TCD140060 [4.0-xx-x-140]
TiVo TCD230040 [4.0.1b-02-2-230]
TiVo TCD240040. TCD24004A, TCD240080, TCD24008A, TCD240140 [4.0.1b-02-2-240]
TiVo TCD540040, TCD540080, TCD540140 [5.3-01-2-540]

Sony SVR3000 [4.0.1b-02-2-110]
HUMAX T800, T2500
HUMAX DRT800


Or does it support only the 540040?

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

Are upgrades available for already purchased products

Are upgrades available for already purchased products?

I bought instantcake and ptvupgrade with enhancements..