CAUTION - READ THIS

You must understand that opening your TiVo is dangerous.  High voltages are present inside your TiVo and you can be hurt if you open the case.  You must also understand that it  WILL VOID YOUR TiVo WARRANTY.  Simply put, this means that it  WILL VOID YOUR TiVo WARRANTY  if you open your TiVo.  Like as in don't call or email me or TiVo or Philips or Sony or anybody else if you damage something.  Don't even touch those Torx screws unless you fully understand this and are prepared to toss it in the trash can if something goes wrong.

The use of the TiVoNET Board is experimental and may not work in the future.  As with any modifications, you can damage your TiVo or other components including the TiVoNET board itself, by using this product.  

The TiVoNET is considered experimental and any information about this product is provided "as-is" without any warranty.  9th Tee Enterprises will not be held liable for any damages caused by information about this product.

FIREWALL
Due to the open nature of the TiVo, you must have your TiVo behind a Firewall.  Since there are a thousand ways to do this, I will not try to explain it but you need some for of Firewall.

The Manual Step-By-Step Method

So, you got that TiVoNET Board installed or thinking about getting one.  Now what?  This page will explain some of the Software details that you will need to know.  Since this product is so new, those "in the know", please email me with additions or corrections to this information.  This is a "work in progress".

There is a section at the bottom that has several files that you can download.

This page will start with an overview and then go into the details documenting how to make your TiVo recognize your TiVoNET board and basics of operation.  Most of this information is available elsewhere in a variety of places.  I have tried to compile this information in one place to save you time.

Also note that many people working with the TiVoNET board are using Linux as the operating system on their PC and others are using Windows.  Keep in mind that some things that work using Linux, will not if you are using Windows.  Since my notebook runs Windows 98, I will be doing all of my work with the TiVoNET board on a Windows PC.  

As far as I know, you really need to have at least version 1.3 of the TiVo software to work with this.  Version 1.2 did not have Zmodem which allows you to move files over to the TiVo.  Without this, you are really stuck.  If you are using Linux, there may be other ways to work with your TiVo other than Zmodem.  The nice thing is that your TiVo should already have at least 1.3 anyway.

You also should have a basic understanding of a few of the more common Linux commands.  Click here for a good FAQ on basic Linux/Unix.  Or just use one of the search engines on the internet and look for Linux commands.  You will find many references out there.

One of the most important things to do before installing the TiVoNET board is to establish serial communications with your TiVo via the DSS Serial port and verify that you can get logged in.  If you are like me, the password 'factory' won't work and you will have to remove the disk drive and install it in a PC and either set the password or just set the TiVo so that you will always have a bash prompt on the serial port.  PVRHack has a great page explaining how to get a login prompt.

Then you need to make sure that you have a few tools or commands available on your TiVo.  The commands, like ls, tail, touch, etc, are sometimes available on your TiVo.  But, if you are like me, they were not.  So, I had to download TiVoDevbin from PVRHack, untar it with WinZip and then move the files that I needed to my TiVo, using the Zmodem file transfer protocol.  

You also need to download the 3 files that Tridge wrote that allows the TiVo to communicate with an Ethernet card thru the TiVoNET board.  These files are probe.o, 8390.o, and tivone.o.

This is pretty much right out of Tridge's documentation but I will outline it for you here.  Turn the power off on the TiVo.  Install the TiVoNET board in your TiVo.  Attach the power connector to the TiVoNET board (RED WIRE DOWN, CUT THE YELLOW WIRE OFF).  Turn the power on the TiVo.  Check for smoke!  Once you have all of this, then we can test the TiVoNET Board, initially without the Ethernet board installed.  Then you do "insmod probe.o" and check out /var/log/kernel for the message indicating that it failed to find a NE2K card.

Then turn the power off the Tivo and install the NE2000 Ethernet Board and  power the TiVo back on.  Do "insmod probe.o" and it should give you the message "looks like a NE card at 0x300" in /var/log/kernel.  If this works, this will be the only time that you need to use probe.o since this is a test program only.  Turn the power off the TiVo.

Next do "insmod 8390.o" and then "insmod tivone.o".  Do not load probe.o.  You should then get the message "TiVoNE found at 0x300, using IRQ 29" in /var/log/kernel.  This means that TiVo sees the card and has installed the software for it.  

The rest of the commands to get the card up and running depends on your network.  Basically you will do "ifconfig eth0 192.168.2.24 up" where the 192.168.2.24 will be the IP address that you will assign the TiVo.  This command will return an error about the IP structure missing but that is to be expected.  

At this point you should be able to ping your TiVo.  And as Tridge says, celebrate!

Again, the actual setup of you card depends on the type network that you intend to hook your TiVo to.  Also, you will need to add these startup commands to a script that gets run each time the TiVo gets rebooted so that you can use your TiVoNET each time it is turned on.

Worley TiVoNET Floppy

Yet Another Method

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