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Ready to hammer the 9200T
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I've had my 9200T for some years I'm about ready to start smacking it with a hammer to kingdom come.
It's now at it's most troublesome period. It has the latest firmware 0.23 (may this year)
I'm sure you are all aware of the common problems.
Missed recordings (normal and series)
Dodgy time keeping (An hour shows up as 30 minutes)
Multiple entries
Wrong recording names (combined with the multiple entries)
Freezing, slowness and crashing (also crashes just as you're watching something which is set to record)
Says it's recording a program (in info bar) but it hasn't!
Normally I just rip the hard drive out, back it up and get the HUMAX to format the drive. But I'm having to do this more and more often now, I did it at the end of October and it's been acting like this for weeks now. I've done the rebooting and resetting but it carries on doing this madness to me. My parents are having similar problems with the same box.
Now I can replace the hard drive, but that is not guaranteed to work, so I'd be stuck with an IDE drive which isn't that much use to me. I had a spare IDE laying about and that didn't work.
I could buy a 9300T but I don't want to end up with the same problems of missed recordings and multiple entries. (Brother has this box and had similar problems)
I could buy the spanking new HDR-fox T2, but at near on £300 it's a very expensive thing to buy, for that price I could get a new TV. Plus RowRidge is not broadcasting HD until 2012, so I wouldn't get the full use of it straight away.
I could just get a V+ box, but that's about £50 straight off to activate the HD, then there is the problems of what to do when the box goes haywire and dealing with Virgin Media.
I'd like some advice on what to do please.
It's now at it's most troublesome period. It has the latest firmware 0.23 (may this year)
I'm sure you are all aware of the common problems.
Missed recordings (normal and series)
Dodgy time keeping (An hour shows up as 30 minutes)
Multiple entries
Wrong recording names (combined with the multiple entries)
Freezing, slowness and crashing (also crashes just as you're watching something which is set to record)
Says it's recording a program (in info bar) but it hasn't!
Normally I just rip the hard drive out, back it up and get the HUMAX to format the drive. But I'm having to do this more and more often now, I did it at the end of October and it's been acting like this for weeks now. I've done the rebooting and resetting but it carries on doing this madness to me. My parents are having similar problems with the same box.
Now I can replace the hard drive, but that is not guaranteed to work, so I'd be stuck with an IDE drive which isn't that much use to me. I had a spare IDE laying about and that didn't work.
I could buy a 9300T but I don't want to end up with the same problems of missed recordings and multiple entries. (Brother has this box and had similar problems)
I could buy the spanking new HDR-fox T2, but at near on £300 it's a very expensive thing to buy, for that price I could get a new TV. Plus RowRidge is not broadcasting HD until 2012, so I wouldn't get the full use of it straight away.
I could just get a V+ box, but that's about £50 straight off to activate the HD, then there is the problems of what to do when the box goes haywire and dealing with Virgin Media.
I'd like some advice on what to do please.
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If you are with VM anyway I don't think you can go wrong for £49 (if that indeed is the cost) although if you are not on XL you will also have to pay £5 extra per month for the recording facility.
I am not aware of many PVR's on the market with 3 tuners like the V+ and although it only has 160gb, which only accomodates 20 hours HD there is TV Catch Up which negates the need to record a lot of programming.
As for my TV it doesn't have HDMI only DVI (easy enough with a cable to switch it I suppose) But my surround doesn't have optical... I use the simple RCA left and right audio.
Nightmare!
Try formatting the disk in a PC and then running chkdsk. If chkdsk reports any bad sectors then the disk has reached the end of its life (which it sounds to me is the case). I think fitting a new Seagate DB35 drive will restore full functionality but if in the unlikely case that it didn't, I don't think you will be stuck with the drive as plenty of people will be loking for replacement drives for some years yet.
OK. You need to be aware that, as far as I know, the Humax has no way of dealing with bad sectors. The expectation is that the drive will internally map out bad sectors which works perfectly until the drive has used up all its spare sectors. Hence using chkkdsk after formatting in a PC is a good test.
I don't know the answer to the audio question, sorry. I do know the latest V+ dosen't even have left and right audio out sockets whereas the older one does, and component outputs too but it is unlikely you would get one of those now.
Cable Forum would be your best best in the V+ section, loads of technical advice there.
The Adapter is
http://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com-2-5in-3-5in-Adapter-Converter/dp/B000ZLM9IA/ref=sr_1_68?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1292426131&sr=1-68
And the compatible HD is The Seagate Pipeline 500GB drive. The best place to source these is from EBAY. A guy does take them out of Sky + Boxes when he upgrades them to 1TB ones. He usually chanrges about £30.
When you attach the StarTech adapter to the SATA drive you now effectively have a PATA drive. PATA drives can be configured as Master, Slave or Cable Select, does the adapter have jumpers to do this? I believe the PATA drive in the 9200 is set to Cable Select.
The only Jumper on the SATA drive to use is the 3GB/s select set to 1.5gb/s mode See http://www.seagate.com/images/support/en/us/cuda_sata_block.gif for details.
The 500GB disk model number is ST31000312CS by the way.
The SATA drive+IDE/SATA adapter combination acts as an IDE drive, and to connect on a two-drive IDE cable must provide means to configure as master, slave, or cable-select.
SATA drives don't need master/slave assignment as only one drive can be attached to each host socket.
Using the jumper (marked J3) provided on the
circuit board, select the mode under which the
SATA drive that is being installed will operate (S
for Slave, M for Master - turn the circuit board over
for designation markings).
Having quoted that it is set to Master as default and the 9200 is happy with that.
Only just picked up your reply as I've been away over Christmas. So setting the adapter/SATA combo drive to 'master' works ok in the Hummy, does anyone know why the original PATA drives are set to 'cable select'. I think 'cable select' is also the norm in the PVR-8000 but I haven't checked for myself yet.
Although the 9200 drive is set to cable select, an earth is placed on pin 28 by the Hummy, which tells the drive it is a master. I assume Humax did it this way so that they had the option to set the drive to a slave if they ever needed to.
I did wonder at one time if the reason some IDE/USB adaptors did not work with the fast transfer mod was because they did not apply a ground to pin 28, but I never did take this any further.
Now that and a bit of Googling is making sense, thanks. Glad your board is still working well.
Just fitted both of these. The HD was £24 including 1st class post.
Works fine straight out the box and that's with a MOD cable from NeilM
Help! I bought the adapter and Seagate drive and set it all up (as per Martin Liddle's excellent instructions in another thread), but the 9200T just doesn't recognise the hard drive.
The receiver works, the fan works, but the drive just doesn't charge up at all.
Could it be a duff adapter or a duff drive (both bought as per Telecat's recommendations)?
So frustrating. All help appreciated. Cheers.
When the disc didn't start promptly I had a changed menu with no reference to recordings. The PVR still worked as a tuner, though. If you are not even getting a boot up then something more fundamental is wrong I suspect.
Just realised you say that the receiver still works so you need to eliminate the 'new' stuff. Remake all the connections, especially the power supply lead and try again? If you can, try the disc in a PC using a suitable caddy.
Actually, I seem to remember the jumper on the hard drive being a bit 'tall' and preventing the ribbon cable making a sound connection. I obtained a low-profile jumper to stop this.
Cheers for the advice. I'll have another look tonight, but to be honest I thought I had checked (and checked again) that the Startech adapter and hard disc were connected to each other properly. But no harm in looking again.
Given that I'm getting the receiver to work OK (and thus at the moment I have a set-top box and nothing else!), it's definitely an issue beyond the power cable. In other words, something is going wrong when the power reaches the Startech adapter, because it isn't powering up the hard disc. And the Humax isn't recognising the hard disc, as it doesn't show up at all in the menu.
Cheers.
Hmmm - is this where I'm going wrong? The adapter came with a y cable, but I thought the power that went through the adapter (via a molex plug) also powered the HDD, hence no need for the power cable to also plug into the HDD.
Indeed, there's nowhere that I can see on the HDD to plug a power cable into.
So I have a 'leg' of the y-cable that I've simply taped up with insulating tape. I read on another thread that someone else had done that.
But maybe I've got it wrong?
Can you tell I'm a novice?
No USB involved, Graham.