# I want to sell my Zippered DirectTivo's, what is the proper way?



## yazyazoo (Jan 9, 2006)

I am ready to leave Directv due to increase in prices and mirroring fees. I am looking at moving to Dish Network for the lower price. I have one subbed Directivo and was using two used unsubbed Directivo's to send my shows to my bedroom and gym. Thank god for Slingbox and Dish's Special remote that works in the whole house. I can bring my laptop and watch anywhere.

So I want to know how I can sell these units. Ebay looks the way to go unless you guys have some other suggestions or forums where people will buy used systems. Hughes sd-dvr40.

If I sell to someone on ebay and they want to get the unsubbed DVR subscribed what do I have to do. Do I have to erase the image on the harddrive or can I remove the zipper and it let's them subscribe?

My subbed directivo, i installed on a fresh new drive. If I put the old original drive in can the buyer just purchase and use this old image?

I think it would be easier to sell to someone who knows how it works and can sell as is.

What is the correct way to sell these.


----------



## classicsat (Feb 18, 2004)

I'd not advertise the fact they are hacked, or sell them unhacked.


----------



## rbautch (Feb 6, 2004)

classicsat said:


> I'd not advertise the fact they are hacked, or sell them unhacked.


I agree that's fair. I've sold 2 tivos on Ebay. I don't disclose they're hacked until after the auction is over, then see if the buyer wants me to keep it hacked or revert to stock.


----------



## yazyazoo (Jan 9, 2006)

That is my problem, how do I revert back to unhacked so they can subscribe again?

I have three tivo's and my subbed Dtivo I actually kept the original harddrive in the closet and put a new one in. So that one I can just reinstall the old harddrive and it should be good to go. Right?

My problem is the other two. I actually hacked the original drive and did not keep an img. My harddrive crashed on my desktop and it is gone.


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

yazyazoo said:


> That is my problem, how do I revert back to unhacked so they can subscribe again?
> 
> I have three tivo's and my subbed Dtivo I actually kept the original harddrive in the closet and put a new one in. So that one I can just reinstall the old harddrive and it should be good to go. Right?
> 
> My problem is the other two. I actually hacked the original drive and did not keep an img. My harddrive crashed on my desktop and it is gone.


If they're all the same model you can use the one image you have to restore all three -- they're model-specific not unit-specific. Otherwise you just need to obtain an unhacked image appropriate for your model. One way is to purchase a CD from www.dvrupgrade.com.


----------



## ForrestB (Apr 8, 2004)

Won't a Clear and Delete wipe the hacks and restore the Tivo to it's original condition?


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

nope
bets way to restore a tivo back to unhacked condition is to run an mfs restore from your back up of your unhacked unit. We all made those right?
Conversely, just put the factory drive back in the tivo.


----------



## Da Goon (Oct 22, 2006)

ForrestB said:


> Won't a Clear and Delete wipe the hacks and restore the Tivo to it's original condition?


Not at all. That just rebuilds MFS, it doesn't touch the root fs.

Reimage the drive or plop in the original. I'm sure most of the hack's authors would prefer their work not be distributed in that manner. Besides, you wouldn't really be doing anyone much of a favor by providing them a prehacked unit.


----------



## captain_video (Mar 1, 2002)

You could always run the tweak_uninstall.sh script to uninstall rbautch's enhancements and then telnet in and delete all of the directories and files that were installed by the Zipper. Once you've done that then delete the rc.sysinit.author file and you're back to a (mostly) unhacked state. It's not really necessary to delete the folders and files that get installed by either script since they can't be used unless the unit is rehacked to access them, but since most of it is copyrighted it would be the right thing to do. 

Note that this does not replace the killhdinitrd'd kernel with the stock one so you'd still need to do that manually. Come to think of it, if you reinstalled the stock kernel it would probably wipe all your hacks when you rebooted anyway since initrd would be re-enabled and the chain of trust restored. Worst case is that you get stuck in a reboot loop or get a GSOD. The GSOD would probably recover on its own but you'd probably end up having to restore an image if the reboot loop occurs.


----------



## BTUx9 (Nov 13, 2003)

Gunnyman said:


> nope
> bets way to restore a tivo back to unhacked condition is to run an mfs restore from your back up of your unhacked unit. We all made those right?
> Conversely, just put the factory drive back in the tivo.


a much easier method to unhack is to trigger an emergency reinstall via tivo diagnostics (see my wiki)... the exception to this is a non-inline monte (like sleeper's) which will often choke on a reinstall because of partition irregularities.



captain_video said:


> Come to think of it, if you reinstalled the stock kernel it would probably wipe all your hacks when you rebooted anyway since initrd would be re-enabled and the chain of trust restored. Worst case is that you get stuck in a reboot loop or get a GSOD. The GSOD would probably recover on its own but you'd probably end up having to restore an image if the reboot loop occurs.


not really a good idea, in that initrd only keeps backups of some of the smaller startup scripts, and just deletes everything else that isn't original... depending on what's been replaced, this could definitely lead to a box that needs a restore.


----------



## captain_video (Mar 1, 2002)

> not really a good idea, in that initrd only keeps backups of some of the smaller startup scripts, and just deletes everything else that isn't original... depending on what's been replaced, this could definitely lead to a box that needs a restore.


I think it would work OK as long as you restored the original tivoapp file. Anything else that gets deleted should be just whatever hack scripts you installed. It might wipe the backported ethernet drivers but since they're not active on an unhacked unit it's sort of moot. I don't think there are any startup scripts or any other major files that get altered other than rc.sysinit.author, which isn't present on a stock unit anyway. I'm not aware of any other stock files that get altered or replaced as part of the Zipper. Running the tweak_uninstall script disables the hacks that are part of rbautch's enhancements script but it doesn't delete any of the files. Initrd would wipe them at startup and put pretty much everything back to it's original state.

Worst case is that you'd have to do a restore anyway, just like you said. I may have to give it a shot on one of my S2 DTivos just to see if it would actually work. It would be an interesting experiment, if nothing else.


----------



## BTUx9 (Nov 13, 2003)

yes, but by running emergency reinstall, you shouldn't have to do ANY of that


----------



## ttodd1 (Nov 6, 2003)

But what fun would that be?


----------



## captain_video (Mar 1, 2002)

Exactly.  The point being that you could restore everything using the method I described without having to pull the drive. This would appeal to a lot of people based on the amount of griping I hear when you tell someone they need to pull the drive to do this or that.


----------



## BTUx9 (Nov 13, 2003)

captain_video said:


> Exactly.  The point being that you could restore everything using the method I described without having to pull the drive. This would appeal to a lot of people based on the amount of griping I hear when you tell someone they need to pull the drive to do this or that.


    
emergency reinstall *doesn't *require pulling the drive, if that's what you're getting at.


----------



## JamieP (Aug 3, 2004)

BTUx9 said:


> emergency reinstall *doesn't *require pulling the drive, if that's what you're getting at.


Just in case this is unclear, an emergency reinstall can be triggered at bootup by a "kickstart" code: link. That's an old set of kickstart codes. There are additional codes in newer releases.


----------



## tsanga (Oct 28, 2004)

I assume the emergency reinstall also restores the stock kernel?


----------



## BTUx9 (Nov 13, 2003)

tsanga said:


> I assume the emergency reinstall also restores the stock kernel?


yes... it's handled just like an upgrade, pulling all the info from the slices that are currently marked active.


----------

