Replay TV Not Connecting To Server - Page 11

Congrats on working through your connection problems; quite a project, and great that it all worked! Your description of the process was very clear. Hope it is still working for you.

I've spent many weeks with no connection, channel line-up, or Guide, but never lost my clock. Thus I was able to do Manual records all along, so I'd agree that you probably lost your clock while resetting your DNS address.

IMO, The oddest thing about your past problems was those partial Guide downloads, using VOIP; mine have always been all or nothing, using POTS. It's tempting to make a connection.

Joe, I agree with your first three paragraphs. But I don't see how the connection to my PC running FREESCO could have clobbered your clock. You would have had to have been connected for about 46 minutes to get to the point where your replaytv got around to resolving ntp-rns.replaytv.net (the clock server), and that flow from a R3k thru FREESCO to ntp-rns' actually works and will set the clock if ntp-rns' responds. Unfortuately, my experience has been that the ntp-rns' server often doesn't respond.

I've never had a replaytv's time fall back to 1999. Sounds like a hardware problem (these devices are getting long in the tooth), and the folks at http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1397340 have done a great job analysing the problem.

I think it was a wise move for you to have installed the replaytv_manual_clock_set.

As you mentioned in a previous post, having the correct (or near correct) time is essential for getting the channel guide.

I don't remember if we discussed that even with a DNS failure session, it appears to me that a replaytv can get to a replaytv channel server. My traces and PTV console messages show that it may eventually try a session with the numeric IP address of a channel server of previous success. And, unlike a cached name resolution, this "previously successful channel server address" is preserved across replaytv reboots (note, I'm using the term "channel-server" just to differentiate from replaytv's NTP server). So, you could get to updating the channel guide in a session that couldn't set the clock, but if your clock is at 1999 I believe you will still end up with an empty channel guide.

My Mom's showstopper has a full channel guide, but the time was off of what I got from us.pool.ntp.org by almost minute. I'm guessing that at least some of her sessions are the long ones that start with failed DNS and eventually get a "raw IP session".

I suggest people compare their exact time from 243 zones option 2 with a time server like D4time. If you're seeing drift, you might want to install the clock panel.

More importantly, there might now be a reasonably reliable way for people to resurrect a "lost replaytv".

1) Ensure your clock is reasonably accurate with 243-zones toggle clock on. If the time is far off, install the manual set_time panel as did Joe.
2) Connect to a FREESCO to get name resolution of the replaytv channel servers,
3) Do a "real dial" to get to the Replaytv channel servers.

I saw that "reden" offered to point his FREESCO at the Replaytv servers, and make a phone number available. That might be the easiest way to do step 2.

Thanks Jon,

Not knowing what really is going on "under the hood" I thought there might be a chance my unit asked for a clock update from your FREESCO, and then reverted to 1999 when it failed to get a response. Thanks for explaining that further.

Let's say I have a bad C183 diode. To check this, should it lose the time again if I reboot? If I power down? For how long? If I do this to check, will I lose the DNS pointer when I reboot or power down?

Regarding the DNS lookup, some things I don't understand still:

Say I set up FreeSCO on my home desktop...

1) Can I directly connect the ReplayTV to the modem? I was able to do this when trying to set up a way to download a guide when the service was "going away". I set up FreeSCO on my PC, the ReplayTV would "dial" (I had to set it to "do not wait for dialtone" in the modem settings screen) and the computer would answer. Of course, this was when I was running XP, and I have since loaded Windows 7 -- so I will have to reset everything up again.

2) Is there anything I need my PC to do? Does this DNS fix happen by itself? What causes the DNS address to be assigned correctly?

I'm interested in trying this, because my living room ReplayTV branded unit now only has data through Saturday (hasn't connected in a week or so). It seems I may need to reset DNS addresses on a regular basis until (if) this gets fixed.

1) When only one day's programming needs to be appended, I am having good luck with the overnight guide updates. However, if a nightly update fails, the machine is unable to update the guide on subsequent nightly connections.

2) If more than one machine is connected to the same telephone line, machines that have failed the guide updates need to be disconnected. If not, they will connect for long periods of time and interfere with the other machines, so they don't get updated either.

3) There are a number of ways that users have successfully purged the guide and loaded a fresh copy. The process seems to be hit or miss. There may be some times of day that work better than others. Some phone numbers may work better than others. Which randomly assigned DNNA server you connect to may make a difference. However, we don't have the needed knowledge of the internal workings of DNNA's equipment or its load to draw correct conclusions. It would be nice to be able to recommend a particular time of day or phone number, but nothing seems consistent.

4) The "Setting the Clock" step, when connected to the server, oftens fails. This goes unnoticed if the clock is set correctly and keeping good time, but is a disaster if the clock if off. It has been observed if the "Setting the Clock" step completes quickly, the clock was set. If the machine lingers for a long time and then moves on to "Setting the Timezone," the clock wasn't set.

5) The backup power for the real time clock IC in the Panasonic Showstopper machines is provided by a capacitor, designated C183. This capacitor develops a high failure rate as it ages. When the machine recovers from a power outage which drained the capacitor, the time reverts to 11/12/1999 12:00 AM.

6) A good C183 should keep the real time clock running for several hours. The clock may slow or stop with a bad C183, or revert back to the 1999 date and time.

7) I haven't personally seen this happen, but the real time clock may become a poor timekeeper in normal, powered up, operation when C183 is bad.

8) C183 is straightforward to replace by someone trained and experienced with doing through-hole component replacement on static sensitive circuit boards. It should not be attempted by the inexperienced and untrained. The board should carefully be removed, to provide access to the its bottom side. Replacement capacitors, which need to be rated 0.1 F 5.5 V, are available on ebay, but may not be exact machanical equivalents, requiring improvising.

Damn, if you had your RTV connected to FREESCO on your PC, then why not just install WiRNS and be done with it. You can have WiRNS 2.0 proxy requests from your dial-up RTV and feed listings (retrieved from the RTV servers) to your RTV.

You can also use WiRNS 3.0 and subscibe to ShedulesDirect and be done with DNNA, too!

Once the guide data was allegedly going away, I set up all 6 of my RTVs to use WiRNS. Granted, I am using 50xx/55xx models, so things were easier... but if you already havw a dial-up configuration that works.... save yourself the grief and be done with them.


Good luck.

Cheers!
-Doug

Might be best to ask the folks over in the other thread. I'd think you'd need to remove power from the unit for it to forget the time but I haven't had that problem.

Yes, when you reboot or lose power, the "DNS pointer" (actually the resolved IP addresses for the Replaytv channel servers) gets cleared out.


If you get FREESCO (um, its author dislikes the abbreviation FreeSCO as it has nothing to do with the SCO distribution) working per the instructions, when your replaytv connects to your FREESCO, your replaytv asks for the IP address of production.replaytv.net. When you tell your replaytv to cancel the setup connection, at the end of that long delay, it actually asks for the addresses of all the other names for the two Replaytv servers. For some amount of time, your replaytv will then have the addresses for the two "channel servers" and a subsequent 243 zones when connected to your external phone line will kick off the update.

You don't have to do anything special beyond getting a replaytv-FREESCO connection.

I had the same tough environment as you - two replaytvs trying to do a nightly dial update over one phone line. If I didn't have FREESCO/WiRNS V2 working, I'd probably take the approach of having the settime panel and a FREESCO to "refresh" the server IP addresses when a channel guide starts running out of days.

Since you have one full guide, you might want to leave that unit disconnected overnight so the other one has a better chance of updating. Don't forget to reconfigure the units to wait for dial when they are sharing your Vonage line.

I've never had success putting FREESCO/VMware/WiRNS on a single PC. I've found you have to run FREESCO/VMware on one system, and have it network to another running WiRNS. Doug, Sounds like you're just running WiRNS so you wouldn't have that problem.

I've read up on the subject, but since my RTV's connect via Ethernet, I have not had to try to set up a FREESCO machine. If I had to do it, I'd take one of the P2 clunkers I have sitting around, and use one of the serial modems I've scavenged from the IT dumpster at work...

Yes, I am just running WiRNS w/ a SD subscription...

Cheers!
-Doug

It's even tougher trying to support two r3k's with one FREESCO/VMware/WiRNS. Lots of rough edges. Not only two PC's but also a line simulator for better coordination between the two units, and WiRNS registry tweaking if the R3k connections take longer than 10 minutes. I got all that to "work" during the "shutdown threat", but I messed up my WiRNS registry tweak causing subtle problems. So I put my two R3k's back on simple dial after they backed off the shutdown.

When simple dial started failing, I figure out my WiRNS mistake and have that environment working pretty well. Even added a couple of 5K systems.

As for WiRNS V3, I'm grateful it's there, but I prefer to use V2 with the Replaytv servers (and hoping they don't go away).

I was never able to get WiRNS to connect to the FREESCO virtual machine. I tried this early on before bugs/instructions were fleshed out, maybe it is easier now. From what John says, it may be difficult with my setup. My PC is an older, pentium 4 model running Windows 7. I have a laptop & an HP Mini. All connect to the router via wireless, and they aren't currently networked to see each other. I don't have a clue what I would have to do to set up the desktop to talk to the laptop to get the guide data.

For coordination, well, I only hooked one up at a time, and only for manual 243-zones connects. If I had had to do this sort of thing on a regular basis, it would have been a once a week event.

Cap,

Thanks for the summary regarding the C183 cap. Do you know how long it takes to discharge the capacitor under normal circumstances? I may have had it disconnected for a few days when it was spinnning the hard drives up/down every so often with no guide data (I don't remember for sure). Maybe I did it to myself. The capacitor looks OK.

Joe

Guys,

Would it be easier to set up a FREESCO server by booting from a floppy than by setting up a virtual machine? I'm thinking you might have to do this infrequently to fix a bad DNS address. Boot from floppy, connect the modem, let it try to connect and fail, then shut it down, pop out the disk and restart the PC.

What's the advantage to setting it up on a virtual machine? Are there settings that need to be saved?

Joe

You could give it a try, but running FREESCO natively can be hardware sensitive. Might not discover your modem, might just not run on your current hardware. Having VMware in the middle solves all that. In addition, if you ever want to see what's going on, you'd add in the free Wireshark program and trace the IP address on FREESCO's dial in port.

FREESCO will save the settings on the floppy disk.

I'd rather just have a vmware-freesco icon that I'd click on now and then.

Two of my SS units reverted back to 1999 after having no power for about a week. I was not doing anything to the units other than the two types of forced connections. So maybe it is just the age of the units and the life of the capacitors.

OK, one last question (for now)...

Why VMware rather than Windows Virtual PC (free on Windows 7 -- I have it running Windows 2000 & Windows XP on my laptop)?

Joe

IIRC when I was experimenting with this, I couldn't find a VM other than VMware that dealt with the serial port correctly. (rts/cts flow control)

Robert

1) FreeSCO: FreeSCO runs the Linux operating system. You should be able to port the applications to any machine, virtual or direct hardware, running Linux. The nice thing about the VMware virtual machine is that the applications and OS are already packaged together and set to go.

2) C183 Real Time Clock backup life: I haven't experimented with measuring how long the real time clock runs from a new C183. I plan to measure voltage drop over an hour or two and extrapolate when the voltage might reach the estimated shutdown level for the real time clock IC. The discharge curve should approximate that of a capacitor being discharged by a resistor, which is probably quite linear until IC shutdown.

If someone can identify the actual real time clock IC being used, I could obtain discharge power supply load current and shutdown voltage information from its data sheet.

I suspect that the IC freezes the current time when the voltage drops below a threshold. When the voltage gets low enough, all memory of the current time is lost.

I'm partway up. I've got VMWare 3.x loaded on my PC (it barfed and said my processor wasn't sufficient when I tried to install 4.X), and have set up the FREESCO virtual machine. The PC modem beeps every minute or so, and I can hear the Replay modem trying to speak back. The Replay screen goes to "connecting" but doesn't get to "connected". I will play some more with it over the next few days. I believe it connected when I ran hyperterm on my PC, will double check later. Hyperterm is missing from Windows 7, but easy enough to extract from a Windows XP install disk.

Joe

Robert,

Have you heard anything recently from your contacts at DNNA who are working with the dialup problems? If they could fix the DNS look up problem it would go a long way towards getting things working smoothly again...

Joe

Update - My SS failed to update overnight, for the first time in almost 3 weeks. Message said it was unable to contact network because there was a problem establishing a connection. Tried a forced connect but it failed. Changed zip to another in my town and got a brisk connection to the RTV server. Immediately forced another net connect which succeeded. This is the fourth time this method has worked for me.

last time I spoke to DNNA they were testing various dialup numbers and reporting them.... and it had to be done manually.

I also reported the DNS issues... which they said were still being addressed, but hasn't. I'll drop another email. Of course it's possible that DirectTV controls the domain and I don't know how difficult it is to get things fixed.

For a summary of the DNS issue... The root servers report 5 name servers for replaytv.net.

• #1 (ns-1.replaytv.net) never returns results, but doesn't report an error.
• #2 (ns-2.replaytv.net) works, but says ns-1 is primary.
• #3,4,5 (*.qualitytech.com) appear to be correct.

If someone sends the query to the first listed DNS server, I suspect the connection will fail. I'm surprised it's not more widespread. Maybe some DNS servers check another nameserver if they don't get a successful response. (I haven't sniffed the packet to see what the response is)

Robert

dialed in using some random area codes and got a good one on my 3rd try.

All loaded up with the guide and momma is happy.

PS I left my area code the same. after the intial connection I waited for the download, clockset etc . and then did the net connect using the 243 number and then it downloaded the guide and updates. took about 45 minutes.

shazzam..

After my initial success a few weeks ago when I got both of my Showstoppers to download, I noticed that one of them had a blank channel guide again. I had to pull the drives from both of them to load the Comcast DTA codes into them, then when I fired them up again, one was successful at downloading the guide, etc and the other wasn't. A little later we noticed that the working unit was recording the wrong shows.

Then I noticed DrJoe's post about setting the clock. I then verified that the unit that was recording the wrong shows had the wrong time. Fortunately, this unit already had the clock hack installed (I'm not sure how it got there), so I reset the time and moved on. The problem unit had reset back to 1999, so I pulled the drive and installed the hack, reset the clock and tried again, but it still failed. Then I re-did my original solution (ie, change the zip, change it back, call the 800 number, etc) and this time it worked. So, fingers crossed it stays working.

Here's a simple script to load the clock patch, for anyone scared of using extract_rtv:
http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dl...&file_id=10872

While I had the units open, I noticed gunk on several of the capacitors in the power supply. Is any of it likely to be glue or is it all from burst capacitors? And if so, how come the units still work?

One of the purposes for capacitors in AC/DC converters is to smooth the ripple on the DC output. take a look at "Rectifier output smoothing" in the "Rectifier" entry on Wikipedia.

If one of these capacitors goes bad, the circuit still functions, but can carry enough noise to fry the electronics it is powering. At one time I had an F38310 RCA 38" CRT HDTV -- an awesome set but infamous for bad capacitors in the power supply -- which led to total failure of the set in a matter of 2-3 years on average.

I'm not saying that this is your problem, but be careful.

Some years back I had to replace a dead power supply and was able to find the successor model from the OEM of the supply in the Replay. If you try to replace yours and can't find it let me know and I will look into it further -- I did a quick peruse, and didn't find any notes on it. But I may have them somewhere.

There are pictures of a supply in the ReaplyTV at: http://home.comcast.net/~mikemenard/...erSupply2.html

Maybe you can compare your power supply to them?


take care,

Joe

Looking at the picture of the power supply below, you'll notice there's gunk between the 3 big capacitors in the upper center, also on the small capacitor on the right, mine looks like that too. There's also some stuff under the metal cover in the top left corner, as appears could be the case here too.



Has anyone ever just replaced the capacitors on the power supply rather than buying a new one?

I've been trying for 3 or 4 days to reset my clock and update the guide data. Tried all the tips on the forums, and spent over an hour on the phone with a really knowledgeable and patient CS rep at Replay ("Cindy"), but nothing worked. I'm sure I made at least 20-30 attempts with no success.

Here is what finally worked for me..... maybe just coincidence but it's the only thing I did differently and it worked the first time....

Trying to change my zip code and dialing prefix, I had just been overwriting the previous numbers.

When you are at the zip code entry screen, press the 'stop' (square symbol) key on the remote. This will delete the previous code. Then press the left arrow key to return to the previous (prefix) screen. At this point I deleted the prefix with the stop key and left arrow'ed to the previous screen.

Then select Continue and proceed to enter the dial prefix and zip codes in the BLANK spaces.

Dialing in the clock updated and the local dialup numbers were reloaded. (They were the same as the old ones) The subsequent 2-4-3 Zone update was successful!

Hope this helps someone...............

dd

AFAIK, that 'Gunk' is glue used by the manufacturer to stabilize / hold straight the capacitors. 'Gunk' comes out of the top and/or bottom of the capacitors. If you visit the site 'Bad Caps', you can see some examples from the failed PC motherboards built during the 'Fake Caps' era. The 'X' (or 'Y') on the top is a built-in 'Pressure Release Point' for when the cap fails. But, sometimes it blows out through the bottom which is more difficult to visually detect. That's when voltage readings come into play.

MikeBoy has a listing of voltage readings for 5K P/Ss on his site. I don't know how closely they would relate to pre-5Ks but you could ask him.


Yes. I, and several others, have.

Is one of your ReplayTVs dead?

Each morning, following a nightly update, the guide should contain listings through a late afternoon or early evening cutoff time one week from tomorrow. If one nightly update fails, I've found that subsequent nightly updates fail.

I don't know if a nightly update will succeed once the existing guide has fully expired, because I have yet to let things go that far.

I have used a variation on dudleydocker's method. It is only necessary to change the zip code. I found it best to change ANT/CATV to "antenna" and let the system download a full guide with a small number of channels still broadcasting in analog format. I use zip 12309 which has three analog channels. Then, I go back and enter my correct zip code with correct input settings.

This is a hit or miss process. It is normal to take a long time to reach the "Setting the clock" step. If subsequent steps proceed quickly, it is probably going to work for you. However, if you find your machine lingering for a really long time, then you are likely to wind up with a "Network connect error" when all is done.

Thanks to ClearToLand for helping The Robman with capacitors. I agree with his explanation that the capacitors in the picture do not show visible leakage. The gunk is adhesive used in manufacture. Note that these power supplies were designed into other products, some of which may have had to hold up under higher vibration levels.

I've gone that far, and it doesn't change a thing vis-a-vis making an update any easier to complete.

both of my Showstoppers worked for a while. One of them had listings that went through Sunday, and now it's emtpy, has a date in 2009, and is constantly redialing. It looks like it went to a factory reset. The other simply gets network errors. If they are trying to break our resolve and switch to somethign else so they can turn off the services, it's starting to work....

Mine have been working for the past three weeks. I even had the phone line fall out of the jack for three days and the guides were full again the next day.

Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any magic bullets to fixing a unit thatt is connecting poorly. Several people have posted what worked for them -- all a little bit different. Keys seem to be having the right clock setting, and actually connecting to the server. There is a hack you can apply to let you set the clock -- but this is only needed if you are actually getting a connect & guide data. To get the unit to connect everyone has their black magic. Forcing a network down in by changing the zip code or phone number is popular. Changing from one dial in number to another also seems to help. Clearing the channel guide from the 243-zones service screen also seems to help (but collective wisdom suggests it takes two times to actually clear the backup from memory). Setting up a Freesco server that can reset the DNS lookup seems to be as close to a magic bullet as we have -- but I still haven't figured out how to get this to work.

Once you get a reliable number, stick with it. If it looks like it is connecting to the server (moves through the "checking for service activation" & "setting the clock" quickly), but gets stuck "checking for new channels" or actually downloading guid data, persistence (and multiple calls) seem to help. I've never gotten a stuck unit to download the guid at once -- always have taken 3+ forced connects. I'm having good luck with 410-510-9009.

Good luck,

Joe