# Broken TiVo Airnet



## tonged (Nov 28, 2003)

Hello.

I have a problem with my TiVo which hopefully somebody here can advise upon. Let me tell you about it...

My tivoweb stopped working about ten days ago, while I was having work done on my house. The builder turned the power off to the whole house so I presumed that the TiVo had rebooted and I just hadn't gotten around to restarting TiVoWeb. Over the weekend, when my TiVo started to run out of programme guide data, I realized that something more serious has happened.

It seems that it hasn't made a successful call out since the power was cycled. I have an airnet card in the TiVo and it uses that to make its daily call - it doesn't bother to use the telephone line - indeed, it isn't connected.

Since realizing that I've tried to ping the TiVo from other machines on my household WiFi network. It doesn't respond to ping or telnet. If I tell the TiVo to make its daily call then it reports either "number unavailable" or "call interrupted". If I tell it to do a test call then it always succeeds, though I think it's lying. This behaviour is the same whether I connect it to the telephone or not.

I've just learned how to read the system log files through the backdoors stuff so I'll try that when I get home tonight. Hopefully I will see something about the eth0 driver and it will all become clear. 

In the meantime, I wonder if anybody has any suggestions for how to proceed. I want to get guide data running again so an interim solution would be to switch back to the internal modem. Can I make that switch without getting a bash prompt? Can I switch back from the remote control? If I just open up the TiVo and unplug the airnet card then will it switch back to using the modem for its calls?

Longer term, I guess I want to get it to work by WiFi again. Can anybody suggest how to diagnose my system and work out whether I need to replace the PC card or the Airnet board? 

All suggestions will be gratefully received!


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## tonged (Nov 28, 2003)

With further investigation I've discovered that the card is still working. If I keep pinging then maybe 10% of ping packets are acknowledged. I've just taken it all apart and checked the antenna, which seems to be okay. I ran the TiVo without its lid, with and without the external antenna on the Zoom card but that didn't help. 

Any ideas?


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## mesaka (Sep 27, 2002)

I don't know if its the same but I had a similar problem with my cachecard and a wireless connection after a builders "power down" (They cut through the main power cable in our road). 

When the power was restored I powered down everything including my wireless router and then checked / repositioned everything to get the maximum possible strength connection. I then turned on the router followed about 5 minutes later by my D-link wireless converter and everything worked (in fact things that we are not allowed to mention in this forum improved significantly!).


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## tonged (Nov 28, 2003)

I've tried all the signal quality stuff and it doesn't *seem* to be that. 

If I remove the airnet card, then will the TiVo automatically revert to using the 'phone for its daily call?

I guess once I've got it removed I can stick it into a laptop and see what kind of signal quality it's getting.


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## ash_bluewomble (Oct 20, 2004)

tonged said:


> I've tried all the signal quality stuff and it doesn't *seem* to be that.
> 
> If I remove the airnet card, then will the TiVo automatically revert to using the 'phone for its daily call?
> 
> I guess once I've got it removed I can stick it into a laptop and see what kind of signal quality it's getting.


I don't know for sure, but I suspect that when you take out the airnet card, it _won't_ automatically revert to using the phone... (I could be wrong of course!) I'm guessing you would need to rerun the nic_install script to configure it to use the phone for the daily call... (of course, you'll need to either get a bash prompt/ftp access, or pull the disks...)

Is it possible to get PCMCIA cards which add wired network ports? Would one of these work in an airnet card? If so, that might be an option -- use a wired PCMCIA card connection to get bash/ftp running, then run the nic config stuff... you'll at least be able to make a daily call then. Just a wild idea... 
Ash.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

I doubt if that would work as the drivers for the Airnet expect to find a Prism II chipset wireless card 

And no, the TiVo won't automatically revert if you remove the Airnet.


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## ash_bluewomble (Oct 20, 2004)

blindlemon said:


> I doubt if that would work as the drivers for the Airnet expect to find a Prism II chipset wireless card


Ah yes... good point... I didn't think of that...

I assume there's no way to reconfigure the daily call source from the remote control using some kind of backdoor?


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Not that I know of...


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## ash_bluewomble (Oct 20, 2004)

blindlemon said:


> Not that I know of...


So I guess the only way to get the guide data updated is to either:

1. Pull the drives and run nic install.

or

2. Fix the wireless card...

Have you tried moving the tivo or the wireless router so that they are closer together physically? Did that help the signal strength? Can you remove the PCMCIA card from the airnet card and plug it into a laptop to test it?
Ash.


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## tonged (Nov 28, 2003)

Results are in.... If you pull an Airnet card out of a TiVo then it automatically reverts to the 'phone line. No need to run the nic_config stuff at all.


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## Mike B (Sep 16, 2003)

Sorry to drag up a slightly old thread, but can you run nic_install from a telnet session and change the daily call option?

My brodaband is down at present and I need to it revert to modem. However, I'd still like to be able to use tivoweb, so don't want to remove the card completely....


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Yes


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## Johnny_boy (Nov 19, 2000)

my TiVo has been off the last few months as it reboots everytime I switch my laptop on then again everytime the laptop loses and re-establishes its wireless connection to the G router. It is fitted with an airnet card, the TiVo is talking to a B network, set up as an access point and plugged into the G network which then plugs into the computer. I can telnet and ftp to the TiVo and it downloads listings fine, it's just the constant rebooting when it detects the laptop that's irritating me as it switches from Sky+ to TiVo each time so it was unused for a long time. We've now decided to get rid of Sky+ as it's out of warranty and has been losing the signal over the last week or so and with a young baby, we rarely get to watch the movies.

We want to go back to using the TiVo but the rebooting is irritating. It's been running now for 3.5 days without a reboot as I've not switched the laptop on so I'm left with 2 options:

work out how to stop the rebooting
remove the airnet card

the first is my preferred option so if anyone has any ideas I'd be grateful. The G router is an Asus router , the B is a belkin and the laptop is a Sony Vaio ultra-portable with a centrino chipset (latest drivers for the wireless).

I'll post replies when I can but my wee darling is teething again so computer access is limited.  

I need to reinstal TiVoWeb at some point as the rebooting wiped it.

cheers


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## Rhodeon (Dec 10, 2002)

tonged said:


> Results are in.... If you pull an Airnet card out of a TiVo then it automatically reverts to the 'phone line. No need to run the nic_config stuff at all.


If you replace the airnet card does it revert back to using that instead of the phone line?

My last successful dial in was 14th Jan. I've been trying for a few days now but my connection between my wireless router and the TiVo is no more. No idea why. I've tried multiple things with boot sequences and tried to remember how I installed the Airnet in the first place with no success there either.

I've now reverted back to using the phone line which is a right pain. Is there any way of looking at the logs to see why it might not be connecting i.e. problem with the card? I have no other way of testing the card.

I'm not convinced that I don't have a problem with the router as it keeps droppping my cable connection. Time for an upgrade but still too close to Christmas to be afforded  and no guarantee that it will fix the problem.


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## Rhodeon (Dec 10, 2002)

Rhodeon said:


> If you replace the airnet card does it revert back to using that instead of the phone line?


The answer seems to be YES. Which is lucky. After 12 hours of looking at "Almost there. A few more seconds please ..." I was getting a little frustrated. It used to take a long time to boot when it was just the modem but 12 hours plus is ridiculous. Anyway, top off, card back in and instant boot. Phew!

Now, I've got hold of an Access Point so time to test ...


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