Recent content by Peter Christy

Its not anything clever - all "off the shelf" really, and I was surprised how easy it was. Getting the settings in the software was a little more tricky, but there was plenty of advice to be found on the forums. I didn't even have to ask, as the few issues I ran into had already been raised by...

Well, I gave it a try, but to no avail! I also tried by-passing what appeared to be the 12v switching transistor to the disk drive, so that the drive got its 12v. Still no joy. I also tried replacing the disk drive with an old (unformatted) 2.5" sata drive, again. it was still stuck in a loop. I...

Thanks for all the suggestions, folks! The more I look at it, the more convinced I become that the missing 12v is a symptom, not a cause. There is definitely 12v arriving from the power supply. The 12v to the disk appears to pass through a semiconductor switch (transistor) of some kind. The...

Yes, its 12v coming in from the power unit, and that's present and correct.However, most of the computer stuff is likely to be 5v or less (3.3v not uncommon). There will be step downs in there somewhere. 5v is present at the disk power socket, but no 12v. I'm guessing that the disk is powered...

Thanks for confirming my recollection! All may not be completely lost yet. When powering it up, I couldn't hear the drive spinning up. I know its on shock mounts, but I would expect to be able to hear something. So, I've just done a check of the power supply to the disk, and the 12v supply...

Yes, that's right! Well remembered! :) It has been working well for 10 years, so I guess I can't really complain! I was expecting the issue to be a disk drive failure, as its the only moving part. Electronic failures are rare, and tend to happen fairly early in the life of a device. However...

Thanks for the advice, folks. I did wonder if it was a disk problem, so I tried substituting an un-formatted 500 GB drive, hoping it would come up and ask me to format it, but it just stayed stuck in the loop. I'll have another look in the morning - try it with no disk, and see what happens...

Had this machine for a number of years, running without issue. A few weeks back, it locked up a couple of times - had to pull the power to get it going again. Two days ago, it did the same, but on re-powering, it is stuck in a reboot loop. The initial screen comes up, then goes away and the TV...

Just a quick update: I was wrong when I said that VLC on the Mac didm't seem able to display the media ID (necessary to retrieve the unencrypted video with wget). It does! At least version 3.0.6 does. Pressing "cmd i" brings up the media information page with all sorts of information, including...

I'm no expert on WiFi, but my personal preference is to have a fixed channel. The problem with auto is that it may pick an apparently empty channel, which then gets occupied at another time. I have an app on my 'phone which shows all the channels in use. I scan at a peak time (usually early...

Wireless or wired? If its wireless you might have a frequency clash with a neighbour, which would reduce the throughput. If that is the case, try setting the router to a different channel.

I did see that, but I've since been more involved in getting anything to work under Linux! Now that I have a (partial) solution, I may investigate this as an alternative to WiredCharlie's method. Depends which is easier under perl! It will also have to wait a few days, as I have other things...

Yeah, I've actually been a forum member for some time, but not made many posts. That's life! ;) Two things that WiredCharlie's script does do that the perl script doesn't: 1) The perl script doesn't auto detect the ip address of the humax - but that didn't work for me for some reason anyway! 2)...

Well, here's a turn up for the book! I spent hours trying to get WiredCharlie's script to run under Linux, and kept running into all sorts of issues. It seems that the ftp binary in the Mac package has a different syntax - and works in a different way - to the Linux version. For example, the...

Actually, I think you are right! I'm not a mac expert - Linux is my home territory, and while I make no claim to be a programmer, I can read and understand bash scripts and "C". What has had me fooled is that the mac - unlike Linux - does not appear to have an "ftp" command built in! It...