Another mad scientist - 522 drive swapping

[Pepper]

I hesitate to post this, because Dish could, with a software update, easily disable what I have discovered. I hope that they will not choose to do so.

I got lucky today and found a 522 in the Goodwill store for $25. After verifying that it would power on and I could hear the hard drive spin up, I grabbed it. If nothing else, a 120GB drive is worth 25 bucks.

I already know Dish won't activate it since this is most likely a leased box from somebody's cancelled account, but maybe I can use it for parts.

I brought it home, hooked it up and found it was a working unit, unsubscribed, with software L168. Powered off and waited, it took the L232 update.

Now things get interesting. An idea was forming.

I unplugged this unit and my working one, then pulled the hard drive from the $25 unit, and carefully attached its cables in place of the drive in my subscribed unit. Then I plugged it in.

The result was that the hard drive from one 522 works fine in another 522. I won't get into forbidden topics here - I am not interested in stealing signal or violating anyone's copyrights - but apparently if the programs recorded on the drive are encrypted, it is NOT with the numbers of the specific box nor is a particular drive "married" to a particular box. I could playback the recordings on whichever unit the drive was in at the time.

What's this useful for you may ask? Envision this:

I can have the unsubscribed box attached to a VCR or DVD recorder for archiving recordings, while the subscribed box is available for watching and recording new stuff. When the subscribed box's drive is full, I can swap the drives and begin archiving from that one.

My next project is to extend the IDE and power connectors outside the case to attach some sort of easily swappable drive caddy. Also I am going to try cloning an existing drive to a larger drive and see if the number of hours available is increased. I have read (dishmod at groups.yahoo.com) that the Maxtor 4R160L0 drives are compatible and have a couple of those on the way for further experimentation.

 

[Bizzach]

Wow, you lucked out! That sounds very interesting...

 

[Pyrophoric]

If I remember right I think there was a guide on how to use a larger drive on a dvr system at http://www.maximumpc.com

Then again it might have been just for a tivo system but I wouldnt see why their way wouldnt work on the 522.

 

[Ned Dorsey]

Cool. I'll be following this topic.

 

[boba]

There have also been posts that the yellow card can cause a wipe of the hard drive if it looses authorization. Unconfirmed but possible.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Pepper very cool, I have stuck this topic.

Thanks!

 

[Pepper]

A caveat regarding hardware modifications:

If you don't OWN the hardware, don't mess with it. If you are on a lease plan, Dish owns the hardware, NOT YOU.

I do own mine, so short of using it for illegal purposes I can do with it what I like.

 

[kwajr]

if you use a new drive will the 522 not format it and write the sw to it so if you were to install a faster drive with larger buffer it might fix the audio issue when two timers are going

 

[mrschwarz]

if you use a new drive will the 522 not format it and write the sw to it so if you were to install a faster drive with larger buffer it might fix the audio issue when two timers are going

Most likely the problem is not the speed of the drive. It is probably the computer it is connected to.

 

[Mark_AR]

There have also been posts that the yellow card can cause a wipe of the hard drive if it looses authorization. Unconfirmed but possible.

*scratchin' my head on this*

But if a 522 doesn't come with a card and you insert a card.... That might be a bad thing.

Which reminds me of another funny story. My first 522 was only an inch thick in front and a bit thicker in the rear after the unit fell out of the back of the installers pickup and into the path of a SEMI. THere was cardboard and styrofoam flying everywhere according to onlookers. The upshot of the whole thing was that the installer salvaged the HD. It still works(In his home PC).

If I didn't lease my 522 I would try to put a larger HD in it. Or better yet. A RAID array. Then drive crashes would be a moot point.

 

[Mark_AR]

if you use a new drive will the 522 not format it and write the sw to it so if you were to install a faster drive with larger buffer it might fix the audio issue when two timers are going

It is my understanding that you would have to clone the old drive from a functioning 522 to the new drive and then put the new one into the unit.

I don't think it could be done with a WIndows PC either. I've heard that you would have to do it in LINUX.

Of course, I've heard all of this second hand so.... take it as you will...

 

[Pepper]

I think Norton Ghost can handle the cloning. That's what I'm going to try anyway, when my 160GB drives arrive.

 

[activ8]

Norton Ghost handles it

Activ8

 

[msnyder]

Norton will work as long as it's a standard file system, e.g. FAT, FAT32, NTFS, or some Linux variant...

 

[Wishbone]

Norton will work as long as it's a standard file system, e.g. FAT, FAT32, NTFS, or some Linux variant...

I use Norton Ghost religiously every 30 days to keep my system fast and clean. Gets rid of spyware, adware, viruses and just crap in general... Oh.. Also gets rid of 30-day demo software

I wonder if the 522 accesses the TV as you would a normal monitor? Since it is Linux, could you put your own software on it? What if you got a nice large drive, partitioned it, and installed a bootloader so you could dual boot? Then, maybe you could write software to access the USB, since it is just a port. The software on the second partition could use the dishrip software and stream it out the USB.... Just a silly idea.

 

[kwajr]

Most likely the problem is not the speed of the drive. It is probably the computer it is connected to.

we are talking the 522 AND THE AUDIO SYNCH ISSUES i thinkits that the hdd gets overtaxed when you have 2 recordings going

 

[kwajr]

i took the drive out and and manged to get my bios to detect it than formated it and when installed it back in the 522 and it repaired it so i think its sorta has a sself healling feature built in

 

[Pepper]

My first test with a 160GB drive...

I got my 160GB drives (Maxtor 4R160L0) today. One is DOA the other is fine.

I put the working drive in my 522, with no idea if there was anything already there or not. It apparently doesn't care about blank drives, it went ahead and did its thing, when done I had a working system, with the following issues:

1. No timers. Apparently those are stored on the hard drive.

2. 100 hours available. Apparently it doesn't care about the actual size of the drive, and creates the data partition as 100 hours regardless.

My next experiment is to use Norton Ghost to clone an existing drive, and try to force the data partition to use the entire extra 40GB.

Note: all timers and recordings were intact when I put the original drive back in place.

At this point I have extended the power and IDE cables outside the case. I used a standard IDE flat cable (the ATA-133 type with twice as many wires in it). For some reason, the IDE cable has to be backward, with the drive 0 connector on the motherboard and the motherboard connector at the drive. I guess they had to do something proprietary to try to confuse people.

 

[Stargazer]

So could one attach multiple hard drives to this receiver and just flip a switch to choose which drive you want to use?

 

[mrschwarz]

Even though it reports 100 hours available, this could be a max hard coded into the program. For example, the free space may be calculated by 100 - the number of hours recorded, rather than measuring the free space available. It would interesting to see if you could actually have more hours on the box when it was full.