Fail: For one reason or another I feel this company will fail. Either a bad idea, bad execution, or a bad team. Failure is defined as either not doing great revenue a few years out, or not being acquired. Fire-sale asset acquisitions count as failures.
Hit: You’ll know it when you see it. These are companies either posting huge revenue, or getting acquired. Keep in mind I think some of these companies that will be Hit’s will not necessarily become a household name, but the technology or IP will be acquired for a gazillion dollars.

BUT this does: 1-888-440-6342

You call that number, press 7, and these idiots never call again.

The other day, Heidi Golff (your picture is so witty and cute with your golff clubs), when you used TwitThis to tweet about an article, you elected to follow me because I was the suggested user at the time. You specifically chose to put a check mark next to my avatar to follow me.

The today, much to my suprise, I see this tweet from you:

@ddn I am so sick and tired of your spamming me; I can’t wait to unfollow you. What a pain!!

And going to your Twitter page I see:

ddn is a royal pain in the you-know-what. if you follow him you get spammed like crazy in your cell phone.

So let me get this straight. You follow me by choice. Then I go on my merry way tweeting about things that are interesting to me or going on in my life, and suddenly I am a spammer pain in your ass?

• You followed me.
• You can unfollow at ANY time. You don’t have to “wait”.
• I’m very real, and don’t spam anything.
• You choose to have your tweets sent to your cell phone.

What in your right mind possessed you to take the time out of your day to write TWO tweets about what a pain I am, when it would take you less than a click to unfollow me.

Congratulations on being incredibly stupid. Shouldn’t surprise me you’re in real estate.

4.x+ Slice Upgrade Guide
Last updated: 7.21.05 11:00 AM

David Dellanave – ddn – projects – david

This was written entirely by myself from the steps outlined by AlphaWolf in his DDB post. I don’t claim to have invented this procedure, so save your breath. Hopefully this is a distillation of all the available information. A large amount of information is copied from my 4.x Installation Guide, that said thanks are in order to HUGE, rc3105, adh and others for their work on 4.0. I’d like to improve this guide, so any SPECIFIC suggestions are welcome. – ddn

Note that a 6.2 Slice Upgrade Guide exists.

Warning

As much as a step-by-step guide makes things both easier to understand and accomplish, you are still dipping into the realm of the unknown. For most people, TiVo hacking is a hobby as time consuming as any other hobby. Realize that what you are doing to your TiVo was probably not intended to be done. You may break it, you may lose your recordings (even if you’re not supposed to) and you may piss off your family. For an extra challenge, I recommend starting this process an hour before your teenage daughter wants to watch The O.C. This should only take about half an hour, leaving you with plenty of time. Or not. Keep in mind, other people love the TiVo as much as you do, and if you break it they will be pissed. The information presented here is a distillation of information, and all risks assumed are your own. – ddn

Assumptions

# There are 5 starting points to this guide:

5) You have a stock DirecTiVo and you are scared to modify the drive. Your best best is probably going to be a pre-hacked PTVnet replacement drive. You’ll spend some more money, but you’ll get a bigger drive and peace of mind of not having to mess with modifying your stock TiVo drive.

# This guide assumes you have a working knowledge of unix and linux. While I believe the steps here are fool-proof, it doesn’t always seem to be the case. This is not a tutorial, and I will not answer basic Unix questions. I did this in one day with tremendous previous Linux experience, and ZERO Tivo hacking experience. You will lose everything on your Tivo following this guide, bear in mind.

If you have no Linux/Unix experience, you will become frustrated if things don’t work exactly as they should. I suggest a beginner tutorial in Linux. It should get you started on the basic commands.

### You will need a USB Ethernet adapter to complete this and use all your new features. A serial cable is not necessary to complete this guide. However, if it doesn’t work a serial cable is mandatory for figuring out whats wrong. Get yourself over to 9th tee and get a TiVo Null Modem Serial Cable. Or make yourself one. Go get yourself a USB200M or USB10TX or similar.

#### I applied these steps to my SD-DVR40. This guide applies to both RID and Non-RID TiVos. This means it will work on an HDVR2 and similar. The commands in red can be skipped if you have a Non-RID receiver. There are other parts of the guide that could be skipped, but no harm can be done by doing everything (except the commands in red). Following this guide on a Non-RID receiver also sets it up for LBA48 (disks over 137GB). If someone wants to enumerate the models this will work on, please feel free to email me. Most importantly, it works on the uma6 revision boards.

##### This guide uses LBA48 kernels etc. Technically you only need to do this if you plan to use disks larger than 137GB. However, I know of no reason that using LBA48 with smaller disks would cause a problem, so there is no reason not to.

*** Hard to read?   Click here for fancy stuff around the commands.

Save the installSw.itcl file with ZZ. Then execute this command to install the 4.0.1b system. If there is an error here, STOP. STOP. STOP.


/tvbin/installSw.itcl 4.0.1b-01-2-240 # Watch the output to see where the files go. It will be hda4 or hda7



bootpage -p /dev/hda # (The result of this command will be /dev/hda4 or /dev/hda7. I will use hda4)
bootpage -P "root=/dev/hda4 dsscon=true console=2,115200 upgradesoftware=false"

# Check it again, does everything look good?
bootpage -p /dev/hda


10. FTP into the TiVo again. I'm not exactly sure why, but /var/packages gets wiped out during the installSw. I'll look into finding a better place to hold this stuff.


ftp 192.168.3.105 # FTP to the IP of the tivo
cd /var/packages/
put TiVo.Stock.311Ckernel.and.315dssappAV.AlphaWolf.tar.bz2

put lba48_2.4.18.px
put init_framework_hybrid.tgz


11. Mount the new TiVo root, and copy existing files over to it. Also takes care of dssapp for RID boxes.


mkdir /tivo
mount /dev/hda4 /tivo # Usually /dev/hda4 but you need to watch the output of the dbload to determine where it went
cd /

cp -Rfpd ptvupgrade/ /tivo/
cp -Rfpd /tivo-bin/ /tivo/
mv /tivo/tvbin/dssapp /tivo/tvbin/dssapp.orig
cd /var/packages
tar -jxvf TiVo.Stock.311Ckernel.and.315dssappAV.AlphaWolf.tar.bz2
cp dssapp /tivo/tvbin/
chmod +x /tivo/tvbin/dssapp


12. Copy the init (monte) framework and kernel.


cd /tivo/
mv /tivo/etc/netfilter-enable /tivo/etc/netfilter-enable.not
cp /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit.author /tivo/etc/rc.d/
mv /var/packages/init_framework_hybrid.tgz /tivo/
tar -zxvf init_framework_hybrid.tgz
cp -Rpd /init/ptv* /tivo/init/
cp /var/packages/lba48_2.4.18.px /tivo/init/vmlinux.px
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda3

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda6
dd if=/ptvupgrade/misc/vmlinux-311c.px of=/dev/hda3 # Copy the killhdinitrd'ed kernel to the boot partition
dd if=/ptvupgrade/misc/vmlinux-311c.px of=/dev/hda6
rm init_framework_hybrid.tgz


13. Say a prayer, if you're into that, and reboot the Tivo. If all is well in wonderland, you will boot up into 4.0.1b, which won't look a whole lot different. You'll have to check System Information to be sure. HMO and Music & Photos will be available, but we still have some steps to complete. Hopefully during bootup, your Tivo DHCP'ed an address onto your network.

14. Telnet to the IP of your tivo. You should get a bash prompt like:


bash-2.02#


Type:


mount -o remount,rw / # TiVo mounts the drive read-only, changes would not be applied to the disk. This remounts it read-write.
cd /hacks/
chmod 755 superpatch-4all-NutKase-0.7.1.tcl
./superpatch-4all-NutKase-0.7.1.tcl

14. Reboot. That's it. If you started from a PTVupgrade/PTVnet installation, you will already have TivoWebPlus installed. If not, you can add Tivowebplus and other hacks etc. Your local channels could take up to 24 hours to re-appear. Or, from a great post by AlphaWolf:

Also one more thing, if you find you've lost your local channels after you upgrade, the quickest way to get them back is to tune your tivo to one of your local channels, dial 1-800-DIRECTV, press 1, then press 711. If you are calling from your home phone then you don't even need to speak to a representative, and it'll take 30 seconds or so, and your tivo will go to the acquiring screen with like 85% complete. Once it finishes, your local channels will show up on the spot.

** Additional Things You Can Do **

• Add crond to automate running fakecall daily or other things. Keep in mind fakecall must be run weekly (or daily) to avoid the calling nag. Consider this mandatory, but it is not part of this guide. Explicit instructions courtesy of AlphaWolf.
• USB 2.0 network modules for improved speed. See guide
• Thanks to everyone who did the Free mini Macs offer. I got my mini a few months ago, and I love it.
• That said, I'd like to get my hands on an iPod nano. Thanks for helping me out.
• Change the hostname of the TiVo and the bash prompt accordingly. I like to do this so I don't do the right command on the wrong TiVo.

  
hostname "hostname of your choice without quotes" # Insert your hostname

  echo "hostname " `hostname` >>/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit.author # Just like its written
echo "export PS1=\"\h #\"">/etc/profile


• Buy me a beer.
• Offer me a job.
• Donate to the EFF.

It doesn't work! What should I do?

Noticing that most of the links are from DealDatabase you might be tempted to go post there and expect someone to figure out the problem for you. Fight the temptation. Re-read the guide and make sure you've done every step correctly. Read the threads with the linked files in them. Search the DealDatabase forum for things relative to your problem. Whatever problem you have, it is not unique to you or your setup. Someone has had it before, and a solution has been presented. Before posting, I strongly recommend reading the guidelines outlined by ESR. If and when you do post a question, post in the Newbie Forum and make sure to be extremely specific. Explain what hardware you are using, what software you are using, what you have done, and what you are trying to accomplish. If you don't, at best you will be ignored, and at worst they will make you cry.

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