altepg disk failure

[dotdot]

hello all,

I think I am suffering from an altepg disk failure.

can anyone help ?

london based - can send box anywhere or fit another perhaps.

all the best

[Pegasus]

What are the symptoms?

[dotdot]

symptoms : total lockup - no lights nothing.

power cycle brings nothing.

i've dismantled my box.

took the altpeg drive out and put it into another tivo.

booted up ...
put my ... network card and fly lead in as well - it came up ....

now - it's dead again - and i have disk which occasionally beeps.
i'm not getting a splash screen or anything...

tivo#1 currenlty - dismantled - with only the orig drive 40g ?
tivo#2 black screen - no info - but green light. (contains altepg 1tb drive (+40g orig drive) and network card..)


thoughts .. people ?

[Pegasus]

Generally there's only 2 things that go wrong with our ageing TiVos: power supply (PSU) or disc. Before you lose all your recordings (by installing a new disc) I suggest trying to prove the PSU isn't faulty. Fortunately you have 2 TiVos so this is easier to check.

I'm assuming that #1 is your main TiVo - the one where the problem first occurred? You say this has the original 40GB disc available - presumably this just sits there and is not normally connected?
(Note: if you run your TiVo with 2 discs then it won't work with only one of them - both must be connected and working for you to get anything.)

Plug in the #1 40GB disc and boot the #1 TiVo - does it start? If yes then the PSU isn't dead. (It may still not be up to scratch but at least it's not toast.) If no, then unplug from the wall, wait 10 minutes, then check the fuse on the power supply board.

Try the same on #2 with its original 40GB disc - does it start?

If both are yes then it is starting to point to the 1TB disc. "disk which occasionally beeps" - do you mean 'beep', or 'klunk'? Discs don't normally beep but they do experience the klunk of death. (Especially true for Maxtor/Seagate discs, less so for Samsung or WD which tend to just fail silently.)

[dotdot]

hello there - i will go back and do some testing on t#1 tomorrow , with ref to your advice on t#2.

t#2 now has the orig drive only in it - it boots fine - with the 'orig drive' - which appears to have backdoor enabled etc..
i went into guided setup to get the dial/phone out working - now it's stuck , can't get a connection.
(not the best place..) - but until then it came up fine - could change channels etc - but didn't have an epg so couldn't do much.

suggestions on how to get this working - i think this had the network card when i bought it , but then i just took it out and put it into t#1 last year when
we had the dialup corruption problem

(for now t#2 has the orig drive and network card connected , but powered off).

on t#2 when i had the two drives in - the came up once , then after a while i put it into standby - then it never came back.

btw - on t#2 when i rebooted it before giving up - all i heard for a while was the ominous beep which i'd had with the drive on t#1.

I have a fair amount of recordings on it - but if they go - it's not the end of the world - a "new" drive with altepg on would be more than enough to get us back up and working.

..will check out t#1 tomorrow and report back.

thanks for your advice so far.

[dotdot]

t#1 with orig drive only - boots but doesn't get all the way up - gets to powering up splash screen ten goes into a loop.

t#2 with orig drive - comes up without issue - but i can't get out of guided setup
(with network card attached - no phone line , dial out prefix #401)

(altepg drive is out of both)

t#1 is a lot noisier - due to spinning rust of the orig 40g drive , t#2 is comparatively quiet.

so , t#2 any advice on getting through guided setup ?
altepg drive ? can someone help with a drive ? I guess my recordings on the altepg drive are gone - no worries..

[Pegasus]

t#2 + orig disc probably hasn't been configured for network use, so will need removing and configuring in a pre-SATA desktop if you wanted to use that.

Ok I agree it does sound as though your 1TB disc is toast. I assume this is a SATA disc and you have an adapter plugged in to the back of it?

Hopefully someone can build a new disc for you.

[positor1]

I can burn a new altepg disc drive for you