InstantCake: Double character entry problem and interesting workaround

[MikeR]

I have the lastest version of InstantCake for the Tivo HD. I replaced the system hard disk on a Dell 530S with the disk I wanted to use to replace the internal Tivo drive. The hards disk were SATA.

Booting off the InstantCake CD worked fine. Everything looked good until I tried to respond to the programs's questions. Each time I hit a key, the character appeared twice on the screen. A single backspace cause the repeated character to disappear. A carriage return/enter resulted in the current screen closing the following screen getting skipped, due to a repeated CR.

I tried rebooted a few time, and tried to play with a few BIOS settings, but was unable to find a fix for the issue. It appears to be that their is something funny about the Dell 530S that the InstantCake keyboard driver does not like.

The new Tivo HD had not arrive yet, so it was too early to try another alternative like WinMFS, since I i not have a Tivo system disk to copy.

Workaround
-------------
I use WMWare's Workstation product. For those who are not familiar with product, this software allows the running of a guest operating system on a host PC through a virtualization process. I can run Linux under Windows Vista, as well as Windows under windows

VMWare Workstation allows the user to configure a virtual machine. I restored the Vista system disk to the Dell 530S, and installed the new Tivo HD on another SATA channel, and booted Vista.

After Vista was up, I started VMWare Workstation and configured a virtual machine. I said the virtual machine would be running Linux, and using the Tivo disk in raw mode. Raw mode allows the entire disk to be used by the virtual machine directly with out virtualizing the disk.

I then put the InstantCake CD in the reader, and booted the virtual machine off the CD.

The CD booted successfully, and i was able to format the Tivo hard disk. he disk is now installed in a new Tivo HD and has been working for week.

Using VMWare Workstation worked for me. If you have the software installed, and have a problem running InstantCake in a native mode, then it is a way to use InstantCake.

***** Does anyone have any idea how to remedy the original problem with the double character keyboard entry.

[Lou Jacob]

I have the lastest version of InstantCake for the Tivo HD. I replaced the system hard disk on a Dell 530S with the disk I wanted to use to replace the internal Tivo drive. The hards disk were SATA.

Booting off the InstantCake CD worked fine. Everything looked good until I tried to respond to the programs's questions. Each time I hit a key, the character appeared twice on the screen. A single backspace cause the repeated character to disappear. A carriage return/enter resulted in the current screen closing the following screen getting skipped, due to a repeated CR.

I tried rebooted a few time, and tried to play with a few BIOS settings, but was unable to find a fix for the issue. It appears to be that their is something funny about the Dell 530S that the InstantCake keyboard driver does not like.

The new Tivo HD had not arrive yet, so it was too early to try another alternative like WinMFS, since I i not have a Tivo system disk to copy.

Workaround
-------------
I use WMWare's Workstation product. For those who are not familiar with product, this software allows the running of a guest operating system on a host PC through a virtualization process. I can run Linux under Windows Vista, as well as Windows under windows

VMWare Workstation allows the user to configure a virtual machine. I restored the Vista system disk to the Dell 530S, and installed the new Tivo HD on another SATA channel, and booted Vista.

After Vista was up, I started VMWare Workstation and configured a virtual machine. I said the virtual machine would be running Linux, and using the Tivo disk in raw mode. Raw mode allows the entire disk to be used by the virtual machine directly with out virtualizing the disk.

I then put the InstantCake CD in the reader, and booted the virtual machine off the CD.

The CD booted successfully, and i was able to format the Tivo hard disk. he disk is now installed in a new Tivo HD and has been working for week.

Using VMWare Workstation worked for me. If you have the software installed, and have a problem running InstantCake in a native mode, then it is a way to use InstantCake.

***** Does anyone have any idea how to remedy the original problem with the double character keyboard entry.

I've never seen the double-character situation you are describing which leads me to believe it must be related to the type of PC you have; that is my best guess there.

As for the VMWARE approach, that is a good one. I use VMWARE to do some of the testing and development and think its a great tool.

Lou

[CapnSensible]

I just upgraded my TiVo Series 3 using instant cake and had a similar "typing" problem. My keyboard would either not respond to key inputs, or would print several of the same characters in a row. I would end up with "PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATA" when simply trying to enter my CD Rom type. Through persistence, I was eventually able to get the right values typed in.

I am using a Microsoft wireless mouse and keyboard. When the problem began, I replaced the batteries with brand new batteries, but that didn't help.

[treyh]

Hi all,
I have the exact same double character problem with my Dell (Vostro 410), so I used MikeR's (super) VMWare idea. I downloaded/installedVMWare Workstation 6.5.0 build-118166. I can boot the CD-ROM fine from the virtual machine. I think VM makes the SATA look like PATA devices, so I used hdc as the CD-ROM mount (that works), and hda as the hard disk (I saw that flash by during the linux boot). The hard drive is set in VMWare is device \\.\PhysicalDrive1, using whole disk. (I never found a "raw" setting for the hard disk)
InstantCake finds the Tivo HD TCD653 9.2a-01-2-652 Standard Release distro, then asks my to continue. I see Your cake is in the oven! It gets to Restoring 13 of 1533 mb. then VMWare says "Operation on file"\\.\PhysicalDrive1" failed, and I'm stuck.
Any ideas? Please help; wife angry. Thanks guys.