TiVo

Project to make TiVo record/play the shows into NetDisk

Benefits

  • Unlimited storage space to record the shows
  • No wait to view shows from other TiVo. (No copy/transfer)
  • 11MBytes/s TiVo shows data transfers between PC and NetDisk (or 55MB/s if gigabit NetDisk)

Equipments & Softwares

  • TCD540x0 (SA Series2.5;NightLight;Gen04)
    • PROM socketed
    • MIPS (big endian)
    • Linux 2.4.20 kernel from SW ver5.3
    • 32MiB memory
  • USB Network Adapter
model NIC buffer reading writing Reading/writing Linux module etc
Airlink101 Giga ?? 796KB/s(4K unit)
2.020MB/s(32k unit)
2.033MB/s(64k unit)
usbnet.o
backported from 2.4.27
Linksys USB100TB 32KiB
Linksys USB200M v2 ax8817x
backported from 2.4.27
NetGear FA120 4-8KiB 3-11KB/s ax8817xUnstable, too often packet losses

Performance measure command

U=4 # or 8, 12, 16, 32, 64 KiBytes i/o transfer unit
insmod ndas_sal.o
insmod ndas_core.o ndas_io_unit=$U
insmod ndas_block.o
ndasadmin start
ndasadmin register xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx --name netdisk01
ndasadmin enable -s 1 -o w
dd if=/dev/nda of=/dev/null bs=$(($U*1024)) count=$((64*1024*1024/$U/1024)) # reading
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/nda bs=$(($U*1024)) count=$((64*1024*1024/$U/1024)) # writing

Status

The NDAS driver is ported for TCD540x0 model of TiVo and has a good enough reading performace (2MB/s)

Goal

  • Make the multiple tivos access one NDAS disk to play/record the TV without delay.
    • reading speed 277KB/s and writing speed 277KB/s in the same time
    • two or more TiVos access the same NDAS disk in the same time without any delay/lag.
    • Without NDAS, users should copy the 1 hour video for 20-30 minutes to play in other TiVo.
  • Let users have unlimited storage space to record the video on NDAS disk.

History

  • April 26, 2006 : The NDAS driver for TiVo ported
  • April 28, 2006 : Achieve the performance goal(277KB/s) of reading from NetDisk: 2.033MB/s