Saturday, March 13, 2004
Who da geek? I da geek!
I finally did it. I overcame all of the virtually insurmountable obstacles placed in my path and I have upgraded my TiVo. I've almost quadrupled its recording capabilities. Oh, it wasn't easy. The road to the upgrade was fraught with peril. I could have been shocked from the TiVo power supply. I could have permanently corrupted my baby's hard drive, or ruined my home PC. I could have stabbed myself in the foot with the special screwdriver I had to buy to unscrew the TiVo case. But, I am a nimble geek, and deftly avoided all of these deadly pitfalls.
The fact is, as an early TiVo adopter, I had a box that only had 30 GB of recording - about 30 hours at the worstquality, and 9 hrs at the best. This is clearly not sufficient. I had to take action! After reading up online and finding quite elaborate and detailed instructions about how to accomplish this magnificent feat, I decided it was time to act. Lest you think I am a hero, dear reader, I do not want to burst your bubble, but I am a mere mortal, reaching for the stars only by standing on the shoulders of giants. It is the people who write these excruciatingly detailed guides that deserve most of the credit. These are the true patriots. I'm pretty damn cool, too, though. I can follow instructions!
So, after discovering the options available before more, the course was clear. I needed to do this. It was my Everest, if you will. I ventured out a bought a second hard drive, finding an 80GB one for 50 bucks. Not too shabby. I bought the necessary tools to disassemble my TiVo, knowing full well that it might be the last time I ever saw it intact. I bid it a fond farewell, hoping that we would meet again in the future, the TiVo invigorated with its incredible new capacity.
The next couple of days were a blur. There were many near-misses - I couldn't use a computer running Windows 2000, for instance, yet that was all I had. I needed to partition my hard drive, but had no tool to resize it. I finally downloaded such a tool, got a cracked version, and partitioned my drive. I disassembled my home PC, attached the hard drive from the TiVo and the new one, and used the downloaded software to run the necessary commands. Don't worry - I was wearing a safety suit to keep me from harm's way. The TiVo had no such protection, however. It was vulnerable, there on the operating table, its innards exposed to all sorts of invaders - dust bunnies, electrical storms, perspiration, and rogue elephants.
It was touch-and-go there for a while. Would the new drive work? Had I connected it properly? Beads of sweat ran down my forehead as I stuck felt furniture pads (as the document suggested) and used cable ties to fasten the new drive in securely. I nearly passed out from a virtually lethal combination of adrenaline and exhaustion.
I hung on. I hooked up the new TiVo. It seemed to almost bulge out from its casing, ready to be reborn. I turned it on. The comforting whir of the hard drive led me to believe that at the very least the worst had past - I didn't have to fear an explosion, for example. I turned on the TV - the TiVo screen appeared, teasingly suggesting that it had all gone as plan - it's ALIVE! I tentatively navigated the menus to see what the System Information had listed as the new size. What would it reveal?
115 hours! Yes! My TiVo has been reborn. It is now Super-TiVo. I cannot be stopped, for I am, and remain, the uber-geek.
The fact is, as an early TiVo adopter, I had a box that only had 30 GB of recording - about 30 hours at the worstquality, and 9 hrs at the best. This is clearly not sufficient. I had to take action! After reading up online and finding quite elaborate and detailed instructions about how to accomplish this magnificent feat, I decided it was time to act. Lest you think I am a hero, dear reader, I do not want to burst your bubble, but I am a mere mortal, reaching for the stars only by standing on the shoulders of giants. It is the people who write these excruciatingly detailed guides that deserve most of the credit. These are the true patriots. I'm pretty damn cool, too, though. I can follow instructions!
So, after discovering the options available before more, the course was clear. I needed to do this. It was my Everest, if you will. I ventured out a bought a second hard drive, finding an 80GB one for 50 bucks. Not too shabby. I bought the necessary tools to disassemble my TiVo, knowing full well that it might be the last time I ever saw it intact. I bid it a fond farewell, hoping that we would meet again in the future, the TiVo invigorated with its incredible new capacity.
The next couple of days were a blur. There were many near-misses - I couldn't use a computer running Windows 2000, for instance, yet that was all I had. I needed to partition my hard drive, but had no tool to resize it. I finally downloaded such a tool, got a cracked version, and partitioned my drive. I disassembled my home PC, attached the hard drive from the TiVo and the new one, and used the downloaded software to run the necessary commands. Don't worry - I was wearing a safety suit to keep me from harm's way. The TiVo had no such protection, however. It was vulnerable, there on the operating table, its innards exposed to all sorts of invaders - dust bunnies, electrical storms, perspiration, and rogue elephants.
It was touch-and-go there for a while. Would the new drive work? Had I connected it properly? Beads of sweat ran down my forehead as I stuck felt furniture pads (as the document suggested) and used cable ties to fasten the new drive in securely. I nearly passed out from a virtually lethal combination of adrenaline and exhaustion.
I hung on. I hooked up the new TiVo. It seemed to almost bulge out from its casing, ready to be reborn. I turned it on. The comforting whir of the hard drive led me to believe that at the very least the worst had past - I didn't have to fear an explosion, for example. I turned on the TV - the TiVo screen appeared, teasingly suggesting that it had all gone as plan - it's ALIVE! I tentatively navigated the menus to see what the System Information had listed as the new size. What would it reveal?
115 hours! Yes! My TiVo has been reborn. It is now Super-TiVo. I cannot be stopped, for I am, and remain, the uber-geek.
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