Windows-2000 upgrade notes

This was posted by on AVS Forum by toots.  It was originally written for a command line version of the RTVPatch utility for Windows-2000.   It is easily applicable to the Linux boot disk as well.

Go to Maxtor's web site, find all the disk prep utilities. The one you're most interested in is WVSET, to turn off write verification. Your Maxtor drive will probably come with some utility disk. You can use that to boot. Put the WVSET and other utilities on another floppy.

You'll have to open your ReplayTV and remove the original hard drive, because part of the upgrade process involves copying the contents of that hard drive to your new one, or at the very least, splicing it together with a second drive.

You'll want to connect both the ReplayTV and Maxtor drive to your PC at once, and if you're going to use the Windows-2000 patch program, your PC's hard drive will also obviously need to be connected, too. Unfortunately, there's no "Windows-2000 boot disk" option, nor will there probably ever be.  Otherwise, make a copy of the Linux boot floppy, and use that.

Just about every computer sold in the last 5 years is going to let you connect up to four IDE devices to it. The PC's hard drive is usually one, with things like CD-ROMs, DVDs, tape drives, Zip drive and Jazz drives being other devices. The IDE devices work on two controllers, the primary and secondary controller. Each controller can have two devices on it: Master and Slave.

So, one of your first tasks is to figure out where you're going to install these drives. Depending on how many devices you have in your system, you may have to temporarily disconnect some to make room for the Replay drives. Obviously, you'll have to leave the PC disk (which is almost always primary master) alone.

Most people seem quite happy connecting the two replay disks to the secondary channel, with the original disk as master and the new disk as slave. That means fiddling with the jumpers on the back of the drives. Having just taken your 30G drive out of the Replay, it will almost certainly already be jumpered as master. Figuring out how to jumper the Maxtor as a slave drive can be found in the little instruction sheet that comes with the drive. Be careful you don't pick the "compatibility mode" jumper settings that'll turn the drive into an 8G drive.

If your system already had devices on the secondary IDE channel, then you'll have to disconnect them. The upside of this means that there'll already be a ribbon cable on that channel. Otherwise, you'll have to find a two IDE device ribbon cable (one will almost certainly come with the Maxtor drive) and find where to plug it in to the motherboard. Be sure to observe which way Pin 1 goes on both the motherboard and the drive. Don't worry - if you get it wrong, your system will just refuse to power up.

Connect the ribbon cables and power connectors to the drive. If your system is short on power connectors, you may have to get a "Y" connector at your local computer store.

Scary yet?

If you get everything cabled up ok, catch your system on the way up when it's running its Startup code. It'll probably say something like "Press DELETE to set up," which you may well want to do. Why? Because if the computer is a couple of years old, the BIOS may freak when it sees a 60 or 80G drive. The trick is to tell the BIOS to ignore the drives you just installed (say there are "none" in the IDE setup for the drives you just connected to the secondary IDE channel). Fortunately, Windows-2000 will see them just fine.

Assuming you've figured out how to do that (and there are enough different systems that I can't give a full description here), try booting the maxtor diagnostic disk. It should tell you if it can see some drive, which is at least one way of figuring out if you did the installation ok. If the diag program gives you some way to disable write verification, do that. Otherwise, figure out how to exit the program, put in the floppy you put WVSET on, and run that to disable write verification. If you just type the program name and enter, it should tell you what the command options are.

Assuming you get this far, try reboot Windows-2000 normally, or if you intend to use the Linux boot floppy, boot that.

If you're using the Linux boot floppy, you can start the patch utility by typing the name of the utility: RTVPatch. Since this is Linux, case is important. Otherwise, if you're using Windows-2000 (and this is really important: WINDOWS-2000 - not Windows-ME), take the RTVPatch.zip, unzip it to some comfortable directory, get a command prompt and CD to that directory. Execute RTVPatch by typing RTVPatch and enter. It should list all the hard drives connected to your computer.

This is important: If you installed the drives as secondary master and slave, the drives will probably show up as the last two in the list. In any event, one should say that it's a ReplayTV disk, and should be in the ballpark of 30G. The other shouldn't say it's either a PC disk or a Replay disk, and it better list a size in the ballpark of 80G. If both these things don't happen, then something went wrong somewhere.

IF IT DOES NOT RECOGNIZE YOUR REPLAY DRIVE AS BEING A REPLAY DRIVE, STOP NOW!

It might also say the ReplayTV (30G) disk needs patching. Ignore that.

You have a decision point here. If you believe that the 2 drive hack really works, you can just try marrying the 80G drive to the 30G and running them together. I wouldn't recommend that.

The other, safer, option is to copy the 30G to 80G patch it and run it as a single drive system. Why? So you can put the untouched 30G drive in an anti-static bag, stick it on your shelf, and if anything goes wrong, you have the original drive, which should work just fine if you put it back into the Replay box.

So, assuming you're doing the single 80G drive route, follow xyzzy's instructions. I'll paraphrase here:

(note that at all stages, it'll be asking you if you're sure. A lower case "y" followed by enter would be a "Yes". I forget all the places where it asks you that, but I'm sure you'll know it when you see it.)

1. Run RTVPatch, note the list of hard drives. Identify which is your original Replay drive (it should say it is, and it should be 30G). Note the drive "number" RTVPatch assigns to it. Identify which is your new 80G drive. Note that drive number, too.
2. Select the Replay drive as the "source" drive by typing "s" enter, then the drive number
3. Select the new 80G drive as the "target" drive by typing "t" enter, then the drive number
4. Tell it to copy the first partition from source to target by selecting the "m" option
5. Tell it to copy the second partition (to hopefully preserve your shows) by selecting the "2" option. This will take a while
6. Tell it to patch the Maxtor drive by selecting the "p" option

After all the blah-blah and are you sures that prints, it should be done. Select the "x" option to exit the program, shut the PC down, and remove the hard drives from it, restoring whatever devices you had to deinstall to make room for these.

Put the original Replay drive in an antistatic bag (like the one that your maxtor came in) and put it in a safe place. It is your backup.

Rejumper the Maxtor to be the master drive.

Install it in the ReplayTV, connect power, power up, watch the "Please wait" screen, that should come up, blank, then come up again. After it's done booting, it'll shut itself off. Hit the power button to turn it back on. SOme people have had to go through this cold boot process multiple times before the box responds to the remote.

See if you have extra space. If it works, fine, if not, put the 30G drive back in and scratch your head.

You'll note that from this procedure, you run the risk of breaking both your ReplayTV and your PC. This is why I hate doing it so much. Actually, this drive jumpering and running diagnostic stuff is pretty run of the mill for people who're used to tearing PCs apart, but if you've never done anything like that before, it can be pretty daunting, and I'm sure there are a lot of steps I take for granted and didn't even think to mention here.

For an idea of what running this program looks like, click here.