Tivo Series 2 Stand Alone (aka SA2) Hacking HOWTO

This is a cookbook method of upgrading a stock SA2, whether just adding more hard disk, second drives, or getting command line access and TiVoWeb running on it.

I will list the steps in order and give links to relevant binaries. The basic part is the same, whether you are just adding a second drive or upgrading your existing drive to a larger one. It's also the same if you want to get access to the shell command line, or adding other hacks -- such as TiVoWebPlus, streaming shows recorded on your TiVo to your PC, etc...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, WAIT!!! Hold yer horses, I'll get to the good stuffs soon enough.

Last but not least (groan), most of this stuffs were shamelessly borrowed from others, and some were from my experience in going through the steps myself. So thanks to all those whose shoulders I stand on!

1. Preparation steps BEFORE starting.
   

   A - purchase an IDE drive, up to 160GB is good, more is a waste unless you are willing to do more complex steps, such as compiling your own TiVo Linux kernel with the lba48 hack (which allow your TiVo to recognize drives larger than 137GB). As to speed, UDMA 100 is fine, so is 5400RPM, and 2MB cache. More -- UDMA133, 7200RPM or 8MB cache -- is fine, but wasteful of money as the TiVo does not take advantage of these features.

   NOTE - Faster and larger drives (7200RPM) tend to run much hotter than the original TiVo 5400RPM drives. So you stand the chance of overheating your TiVo or shorten the life of your powersupply.

   B - a PC configured like so. The config has to be exact as the Sleeper ISO is hardwired to expect it that way :-(.

   • IDE drive configured as Primary Master, which has a FAT32 partition drive C that is large enough to backup an image of your old TiVo.
   • CDROM drive configured as Primary Slave. Must be bootable as you are going to boot the Sleeper ISO from it.
   • Available Secondary Master channel where you will (first) hook up your TiVo drive for backing up, then later your new (larger) drive to restore and adding hacks to.

2. Go to the local hardware store and buy two Torx wrench, #10 and #15, I think.
   
   
3. UPDATE March 28, 2005 - I've been told to not use the Sleeper ISO anymore. Instead use killhdinitrd 0.9.x method. You can boot modified kernel on DTivo and all SA 2s without having to modify PROM.
   
   
4. Here is another link that give better instruction.
   
   
5. DEPRECATED - You need to find the Sleeper ISO at the thread pointed to by the link.
   
   

   If you are impatient, you can try to d/l version 1.02 here.

   The Sleeper ISO is a set of pre-packaged scripts to help automate the process of backing up your original drive image, and preparing a new (or restoring to the old) drive. It also include scripts to add useful hacks to your drive (and TiVo). Don't worry if you have no idea what most of them are, whether you make use of it or not, your TiVo will still function as before, just with more storage space.

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Last Updated: $Date: 2004/07/25 19:41:06 $