# Connecting my TiVo to my MacBook Pro



## Jo.Cassady (Jul 21, 2002)

Hi,

I bought a TiVo from eBay a few years back, with the SiliconDust Cachecard thing pre-installed. (Along with upgraded hard drive etc.)

Being a bit numpty, I wasn't able to connect to it to get that Terminal window to change the settings so that it retrieved the daily TV listings from telephone line (it was set up to get it from the internet). I actually paid someone to do it for me.

Well, I've now moved house and we have glorious broadband (wohoo - broadband in central London!).

There's a tiny ethernet cable hanging out the back of the TiVo.

(I hope to edit this post later & insert a photograph so it's clear what i'm talking about).

I have bought one of these from Maplin:










Can I now just link this up to my Apple laptop and run 'Terminal'? My internet comes in to the Macintosh over wifi (Airport card).

Can I

1. "Talk" to the TiVo box, via my Macintosh to say 'Hi, please use the internet for updates, not the telephone line'

2. Enable the TiVo to "talk" to the internet via my Macintosh. (The Macintosh gets its internet from the Airport card)

(Please excuse my inability to construct coherent sentences & lack of technical terminology).

(I have tried Googling for 'silicon dust cachecard' instructions but no results come up).


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Yes you can connect that to your mac with the "coupler" you've bought

Do you have the ip address of the tivo written down?

The commands to use are:

*telnet 192.168.1.200*

*nic_config_tivo*

```
Current/New Configuration:
        timing setting = optimal
        mac address    = 00:0B:AD:3C:04:2F
        ip address     = 192.168.1.200
        ip subnet mask = 255.255.255.0
        ip gateway     = 192.168.1.1
        debug level    = off
        daily call     = dialup

Options
        1: Change timing setting
        2: Change MAC address
        3: Change IP address/gateway
        4: Change debug logging option
        5: Change daily call option
        9: View/extract log file
        0: Apply and exit
        !: Exit without saving
```
Choose option 5, then save with option 0

That'll work straightaway if plugged direct into the router 
- you'll have to set the Mac to share it's internet connection if you're plugging direct to your Mac though.


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## Trinitron (Jan 20, 2003)

You can connect Tivo directly to your Macbook but it's not a good idea. If you look at the information page on your Tivo over a few days you'll see that it schedules the next 'daily call' for TV schedules exactly 24 hours after finishing the current call - so the time slips a few minutes each day. For example, my Tivo's last call was at 00:31 today, the next is at 00:47 tomorrow. So you would need the ethernet cable permanently plugged into your Mac to allow it to function automatically.

What you need is to connect your Mac and Tivo independently to your WiFi router. Simply plug Tivo into a spare port. The adapter you have is good for connecting a standard ethernet cable to Tivo - I use the same thing.

If you have a router that you can configure yourself, it can be helpful to set the network IP to 192.168.1.1. That way it should allow Tivo to connect without having to change anything in the Tivo settings. Many wireless routers default to 192.168.0.1, so it would not 'see' Tivo. You can find out which you are on by typing both addresses into a web browser. The one that brings up the router admin page is the correct one!

You can then use Terminal to talk to Tivo. I would add to mikerr's advice the slightly obscure command 
*telnet -K 192.168.1.200*
(assuming that's Tivo's IP address; the -K is to prevent your typing being echoed back to you on screen) then use nic_config_tivo as shown by mikerr. Finally, type 'reboot' to restart Tivo and you should be good.


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## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

Hi Jo,

I migrated to the Mac a few years ago, so I thought I'd drop you a screen-shot showing all the steps to get into the configuration utility.

I left the cursor pointing at the relevant position in the Terminal menu, highlighting the option to make a remote connection.

The "New Remote Connection" window is where you type the IP address and simply click connect. For remote systems you might connect to regularly, you can add the IP to the "Server Window" using "+" button, then you can just select the tivo's IP from there rather than typing out the address every time.

Finally, the actual terminal session is the window furthest to the right of the screen shot. You can see at the top where I typed in the relevant commands to change directory to "sbin", followed by the "./nic_config_tivo" command to launch the configuration utility.

Another tip, you can just type "./n" and press the tab key on the keyboard and the shell session will complete the rest of the line "./nic_config_tivo" to save typing and typo's


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