Dead TiVo - Worth Repairing?

[jmaye]

I have a dead TiVo in my attic - suspect sound card and power supply. Also had a dodgy disk in in last few weeks of life. With a new EPG coming is this worth repairing and where do I go? I do have a live one in the living room but would love to have a second one again. It is currently dial up only

[tivomas]

thats a tough one

the power supply £20 for a new one from tivoland
the hdd, most hdd will work (dont get western digital) and pick your size approx £40-99

If you or someone you know can swap the psu and the hard disk could me worth a try.

the sound - thats the tough one, was the sound due to what was been fed into tivo? or the output from tivo itself, i.e. old recorded stuff also sounded bad. Then that might be a tough one to solve. YOu can probably purchase a used working model on ebay, this is probably your best bet.

A new hard disc would be advisable anyway - they dont last for ever. A working one on ebay is probably your best bet - from a cost point of view, then just replaced the hard drive.

[AMc]

If you have the problem with no sound output after a restart that can indicate a problem with the PSU.
If you're moderately handy with a screwdriver you can tweak the PSU to increase the voltage (search at the UK S1 forum at Tivo Community).

You could also try swapping out the working PSU (&/or the drive) in your good Tivo into the faulty one to test the sound- but I'm not a fan of fiddling with something that works and is relied on.

If basic fiddling with the PSU doesn't fix your sound issue then a new disk would seem like a waste of money to me but you should be able .

There is also a script that Miker wrote (IIRC?) that deals with the no sound issue by rebooting - but you'd need network access to try it or to pull the drive and mount it in a PC with a Linux boot disk.

[mikerr]

The script to reboot on no-sound is here:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/sh ... &page=2#35
or by "install nosound" if you have my install script on your tivo.

A new PSU doesn't always solve it - certain brands of HDDs also make it worse (hitachi) as well as cachecards/ram.
You can increase the 5v line slightly by turning the blue pot on the PSU anticlockwise a quarter turn (when turned off!).

At present many working tivos are being given away or sold for next to nothing on ebay and elsewhere, so keep an eye out !

[jmaye]

Thanks for the input. In the last weeks of its life it would lose sound on live TV and therefore during recordings. Old recordings were fine. Power supply - well a gonner now as not even a green light let alone boot. Probably needs a professional review to start with a PSU swap and then see what state it is in. Happy to spend a bit of money on it if I have TiVo for a few more years. This was my first purchase bought in October 2000 and never been upgraded in any way. I am semi techie but dare I say it mainly Windows experience and not much Linux but handy with a screw driver.