Tivo upgrades rock!

Well I have just upgraded my old Philips Tivo unit: I doubled the RAM and added the TurboNET card (both from 9th Tee Enterprises).

The RAM was tricky: I had to solder two 50-pin surface-mount RAM chips, but I've been soldering for 30 years so it was straightforward enough. Now I have 32 megabytes of RAM: it probably doesn't make things go any faster yet, but I'll next be updating the operating system to include a telnet daemon, a web server (for setting up recording of programs remotely), and onscreen caller-ID.

Even without the extra software, my Tivo now does its channel-guide upgrades over the network. It gets an IP address via DHCP over my network, so this makes it run right along.

Big thumbs up to Tivo for integrating the TurboNET drivers into the software and making the "update over the net" option available. Clearly this benefits them too (no need to pay for local POP service), but it's just a cool deal.

Also big thanks to Steve Gardiner for being my Tivo consultant.

Posted by Steve at August 14, 2003 05:55 PM | TrackBack