I have plenty to write about today, but the only thing on my mind right this second is that my Tivo may be dead. I came home and it was crashed. So I rebooted it. it is after all linux, so I was like a reboot will make it all better. Well 30 minutes later, it is still sitting at the please wait while I startup screen. that is not good. This thing always comes back in like 5 minutes. I don’t know what to do. It is like a good friend is sick. Is life worth living if Tivo doesn’t work? Yeah, probably. But it will suck that much more:(
I just turned it off, and I will let it sit idle for a while before I try to bring it back up. Honestly I think it is toast. I have an original 40 hour unit that I have hacked to 160 hours with a network card. No way I can get “support” on it. The unit was also purchased in September of 2001. So it has got some years on it. The thing is I have thought about upgrading and realized I had no reason to. This 3 year old device still does everything I want it to. Now only if it worked…
More news as it develops…
UPDATE: Well a 2 hours have passed and the Tivo is still not coming back online. According to the message boards I have read, the drive is bad, or the unit is totally fried. Not sure what I am going to do. I can try a different hard drive that I can prepare with a $20 piece of software from the people I originally upgraded my unit from, PTVUpgrade. Or I can upgrade to a new Tivo, or a different device. Either way I am out of commission for a few days. For now I am getting my shows on my ATI capture card. it is not perfect, but I have tv…
I don’t know how you upgraded your Tivo. But when I did my series 1, I had the original drive and backup the OS on to a CD using free software (blesstivo, tivomad, forgot which). When the HD failed, which it did, less than 6 months later, it took me a weekend, but I fixed it. I losted all my recordings, but it was not as bad as losing the Tivo.
I don’t know why it cost you $20 to buy some software. Most of the stuff is free (and legally free), just need to find them in the forums. For $20, why not pay $30 more and get a Series 2 AR?