Dummy's Guide to:

Tivo PPP over Serial for Win 9x

ANNOUNCEMENT!!!:

I am always looking on a way to improve this How-To and help is always appreciated. Anyone willing to contribute with:  OS differences, information from other sites that proved helpful, areas that were unclear, or problems and solutions not covered here; would be in my dept.

Versions:

2-14-2002 -- Updated for XP, and updated WinRoute links ( WinRoute now supports XP )
1-24-2002 -- Finally updating for 2.5.1,worked on clarifying some directions.
???????? -- The original I can't remember when I did it

Introduction:

This how-to was written to help Win 9x users setup a Tivo PPP connection for remote update and Shell access via the Tivo's Serial Port. Its is my hope that I have successfully and simply compiled the information from the Tivo Pioneers whom made this Tivo Hack and all other Hacks possible. It is the goal of this article to to make it possible for any one with basic PC knowledge to set this up stress free. In other words if your don't know what a Primary and Secondary IDE port is, or have no clue what a Master/Slave jumper is Tivo hacking is probably not for you....See the Tivo FAQ  -> Entry 1.7. That aside you don't really need to know Linux, networking, or even what PPP is ;-}In fact this How-To assumes you know nothing of Linux.

Must Read Notes:

1. Please take the time, to visit my Feedback/Contact page. This site will only get better if you do.
   

2. First if you want to do this on DirecTivo  your going to need to do some research first as it requires a modified PROM which I'm not even about to get into here, secondly even with the new PROM the diagnostic console will still not exist.
   

3.  It is important to know what software version your TiVo is running as in particular the 2.5.1 version of pppd (TiVo's PPP daemon) doesn't work, I'll cover the workaround later. 
   

4. If your trying to get this to work on Win2K the Null modem driver provided here WILL NOT WORK instead you'll need to use the built-in Null Modem Driver listed as "RAS Serial Connection Between 2 PC's"
   

5.  Ok the Final and most important note, if you need help or are having any problems, the other board patrons and I have no problem answering questions, but please do your homework FIRST! 90% of all errors are Typo's and nobody wants to be your spell check. If you still need help feel free to post on AVS TiVo Underground and please provide a FULL description  of your problem along with your PPP and modem logs.

What you'll need:

• Null Modem Adapter for your Tivo Serial Cable

• Null Modem Driver (unless using Win2k) - Get it here

• Terminal Program such as Hyper Terminal that comes with windows, I suggest Tera Term

• Telnet Client such as Windows Telnet, again I suggest Tera Term

• Windows  machine with dialup networking and dialup server installed (covered briefly in PPP on Windows )

• Kazymyr's boot cd ( preferred!!! ) or the floppy utilities TiVoMaD v3.2, qunlock, MFStools ( more on this in Backing Up your Tivo )

• Some kind of NAT software like WinRoute Lite

• JOE for TiVO

• A decompression program for tar.gz files, PowerArchiver  will do nicely.

PPP setup sources & other Resources:

Index: