azbox elite image/kernel

[freezy]

anybody try doing a ghost copy of the ssd and fiddle around with it?

i read that it is a normal ide connector. i looked and it is except it doesn't need a power supply. a guy could do a ghost copy to another disk. it's only 256mb for the whole thing. there's enough room inside if you wanted to mod a usb/sata or ide hdd internally.

i want to try booting knoppix or puppy linux from a pre-imaged ide hdd w/an external psu and see what happens . or is that a huge bad idea?

 

[B.J.]

anybody try doing a ghost copy of the ssd and fiddle around with it?

i read that it is a normal ide connector. i looked and it is except it doesn't need a power supply. a guy could do a ghost copy to another disk. it's only 256mb for the whole thing. there's enough room inside if you wanted to mod a usb/sata or ide hdd internally.

i want to try booting knoppix or puppy linux from a pre-imaged ide hdd w/an external psu and see what happens . or is that a huge bad idea?

There was a post somewhere (not sure if here or over in the Rick's forum) 5 or 6 months ago, from a fellow who put a hard drive (I think unformatted, but I'm not positive without going back to my notes) into the Azbox in that IDE connector you mentioned, although I think the hard drive had to be external, and I think powered externally too. It wasn't necessary to do any copying, since when the Azbox was turned on, he just had a thumb drive with the desired firmware patch file, and the Azbox did the rest, ie I think it formatted the drive and installed the firmware. I copied the thread at the time, but it would take me a while to find my notes.
I was mainly interested, thinking that perhaps if a HDD that was faster than the module was used, that maybe recording high bitrate video might work better, however I'm pretty sure that the poster said that this didn't help relative to the recording issue, so I decided to wait to see if there were any other benefits of the procedure to make it more worthwhile, but never heard any more about it. If it would fix the recording issue, I'd do it in a second.

That recording issue is strange. Makes me think that they might be using scripts instead of compiled programs or something.

 

[freezy]

So it's ROM based and the operating system isn't on that little SSD?

 

[B.J.]

I'm just guessing here, but it seems to me that the OS isn't on the module or on ROM, the OS is the firmware that you put on the thumb drive. What apparently IS on ROM, on this and most other STBs, is a very basic loader program that will load the OS, and less common apparently a program that will format the disk or module. The part that confuses me a bit, is what about the contents of that disk1 disk2 backup directory that apparently doesn't get loaded or replaced when you change firmware. Ie I wonder whether if that is completely missing, will those backup files be generated somehow? Or perhaps the backup files are on some eeprom or something? When I first read the post about replacing the module with a real hard drive, I had assumed that those backup files were part of what was being loaded with the firmware, but now I'm a bit confused. I'll have to look to see if I can find that old post, and see if that was mentioned, and perhaps ask the OP'er whether those files were generated.

 

[B.J.]

OK, just for general info, and perhaps this can encourage people who have a bit more time on their hands than I do to try this, I found the thread I was referring to above, however it was over on Rick's forum. Look at message867 in the VERY LONG thread : Azbox Elite HD - Ricks Satellite Wildfeed and Backhaul Forum This is where someone asked a question about this, got a reply that it wouldn't work, then came back in msg 869 saying that he tried it and it worked, and then in msg 871 and 873, he explains how he did it. I'm a bit confused about the message numbers, because when I saved the web page months ago, the message numbers were different, so if the message numbers don't match, look for the message by KEY2WAY posted on 01/09/10 at 01:43 PM . I don't see any mention of the disk1/disk2backup files. Eventually I will try this, but right now I have too many other things on my plate.

 

[B.J.]

I just continued to read a bit further in that thread, and saw some things that I had missed the first time through (that thread was SOOOO big, that it was easy to miss posts). What I just noticed was that the OP'er DID say that this improved recording/playback of high bitrate stuff. This has me once again VERY interested in doing this! ALSO, I notice that the OP'er posted a web page dedicated to the process. Look at: AZBox Elite IDE Recording

 

[Babadem]

I just continued to read a bit further in that thread, and saw some things that I had missed the first time through (that thread was SOOOO big, that it was easy to miss posts). What I just noticed was that the OP'er DID say that this improved recording/playback of high bitrate stuff. This has me once again VERY interested in doing this! ALSO, I notice that the OP'er posted a web page dedicated to the process. Look at: AZBox Elite IDE Recording

This is very interesting. I'm going to have to take a closer look at this.