# has this been tried?



## Black & Guss (Jan 22, 2006)

New poster to the forum here but have been watching for quite a while. I have not ever come across this topic, and don't know if it is possible or not. We all know that Tivo runs on Linux. Obviously the x86 distros would not work. Here is the deal, I have 2 directivo's and an old series 2. My series 2 has seen better days and I have had fun with some of the more common hacks. What I want to do is spin a full version of linux on it. I am no programmer so I dont know what the arcitecture is of tivo or how to write/interpret code. I just had a weird idea and wondered if it would be possible to spin a full version of linux, (fedora, mandrake, debian, slackware, etc) on it. As far as I can tell, my series 2 box is working, I have a 80gig hd to donate to the project. If anyone can point me in the right direction, I would appreciate it. 

Thanks,


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## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

there are reports of getting debian mips to work but the tivo's archictecture is SO archaic that it doesn't do much good.
check DDB for posts about it.


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## cheer (Nov 13, 2005)

Just to amplify what Gunny said...the S2 Tivo is essentially a MIPS processor running at -- I want to say -- 200MHz.

So you'd either need a Linux distro for MIPS or you'd have to roll your own from sources using a cross compiler. You'd also have to build a kernel with all the necessary hardware support, etc. And it's going to be s l o w if you try to fire up something substantial.

A better approach might be to just leave the Linux that's on there and modify accordingly. You can probably replace the startup scripts to prevent loading of myworld, etc., and just cross-compile and add whatever you like. Not for the linux newb, but I expect it's doable.


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