using direct tv dvr HD as firewire drive?

edX

edX

mac shaman
ok, i've got a broken ultimate tv reciever (bad line connection - yes it's in the receiver). i'd like to remove the HD and use it with my mac - maybe in a firewire enclosure, maybe replace the internal which seems a bit wanky and has always been small. my first problem is getting into the thing. there's obviously more to removing the case than the 2 screws i located. it's an rca receiver - 2-3 years old.

anybody know anything about doing this or know where i can find more info on it. i assume my mac will tell me it's unreadable and ask if i want to initialize it when i hook it up. anyone know if that's right or will i need to do something different like hook it up to a pc and reintialize it there first? ultimate tv is a m$ product after all.
 
Ultimate TV is wacky. IIRC it uses the seldom used IDE security functionality of the BIOS. Basically it sets a password to access the disk. Ofcourse, the password is only needed once while the disk is running. So what people would do to copy the disk, and/or make it usable on another system is to power on the ultimate tv unit, and wait for the disk to initialize, once it's done that, you unplug the ide cable from the unit, and plug it into whatever computer you want to use the disk on, or in your case, the firewire case. You don't want to unplug the power on the drive, or you start over again. So, stick it in the firewire drive, then the mac should see it, and then ask you to format it.

Ofcourse, this is from what I recall on Ultrimate TV from a cow-orker who hacked his before it died, but he's out of town, I can check with him next week on exactly what he did, but I think I recall the steps correctly....


Brian
 
ok, that's helpful. definitly check with him when you can. thanks!

any more help from anyone is still appreciated here. i still don't know how to get into the thing to start with.
 
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