Topfield PVR

Anyone still using one? Mine still gets occasional use - although I have an HD Humax.

The HD on the Toppy failed, and not worth the cost of a new one. And IIRC they are a bit fussy about makes too.

Got an identical used HD from Ebay for £15, and it's going again.

But I've lost MyStuff - and aftermarket GUI for the Toppy, which I liked.

Tried to download and install it again - but it needs Win XP (at least for the USB driver) So used the old PC which is dual boot Win7 and XP.

But the MyStuff installer complains it can't go online - even although I downloaded the installer using XP.

Decided to try XP virtual on my Win7 Pro laptop. Same thing - MyStuff complaining it can't go online. Despite disabling AVG and firewalls, etc.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)
Loading thread data ...

Very recently I believe one of the web sites hosting some of the Mystuff utilities may have come to an end but other users have taken to hosting the material.

Have you seen....

formatting link
When I last had problems with the installer I seem to remember that the browser Internet Explorer had to be the default browser for some reason. Try starting Internet Explorer before starting the installer.

Is the computer actually communicating with the Toppy. You may need the USB drivers which can be found with a replacement for the the Topfield tools called Antares

formatting link
See download and installation section on that web page.

Note I've replaced my Toppy around 2/3 years ago with an Enigma 2 receiver/PVR running OpenVix so I've no recent practical experience downloading for a Toppy.

formatting link

Reply to
alan_m

As per my other post there are replacement USB drivers for 32 and 64 bit Windows OS associated with Antares plus an quick installer called Z4t. These allow you to use later versions of windows.

selgrove.id.au/antares/z4t.html

Reply to
alan_m

I know I had trouble trying to upgrade mine with a SATA drive (using a PATA to SATA adaptor). Even models that were claimed to work did not seem to want to play ball.

ISTR you can do it via FTP (and hence any OS) if you have it networked. (I used a Linksys NSLU2[1] with modified firmware to do a USB to LAN connection to toppy)

[1] I have a spare one if you want it.

Sounds like the installer is having difficulty reaching the repository of files...

All you really need is the tap file anyway:

formatting link

Reply to
John Rumm

I installed a PATA to SATA adapter and I have found that it does not work very well, I have wondered about trying a different one as SWMBO likes using the box.

Reply to
Michael Chare

Did you also change the 40 way lead fo a 80 way lead (fitted the "wrong" way around necessitating drilling out a blanking plug)?

Poor hard disk performance can also be associated with a power supply failing. It's not a matter if but when the power supply capacitors start failing and result in unreliable operation. Have the capacitors been replaced?

Reply to
alan_m

I bit the bullet and purchased the (expensive) adapter from Topfield and never had any problems.

John

Reply to
JohnW

No, I did not know about that. The drive works, just not quite as well as it might. My computer has remembered that I bought the Startech adapter, and I also bought a 20cm 40 pin cable. Does it matter which way round the cable is fitted?

I did change the PSU capacitors although the voltages were not that bad, I was told.

Reply to
Michael Chare

That?s not correct.

Have the capacitors been

Reply to
87213

ISTR the startech was supposed to be the best option. I tried a few different ones including that.

Yup probably worth trying, the 80 way lead may well reduce the noise pickup...

The life rating on the OEM caps used in mine was a fairly feeble 2500 hours or similar. Not long for a box that can be powered for several hours per day, and in some kind of standby 24/7. A couple were also near hot components (and they were only 85 deg devices). So it was not surprising that problems became visible within 3 years. I redid them with Rubycon 105 deg C devices.

Reply to
John Rumm

From memory there were two types of adapter, one fitted directly on to the connector on the Toppy main board and didn't require a ribbon cable and the other fitted directly to the back of a PATA disk connector and required a ribbon cable between the Toppy main board and the adapter.

If you had the latter it was recommended that the cable was replaced with a 80 way where the extra 40 "wires" in the ribbon cable were earth/return so that effectively you had signal wires and each was separated by an earth/return. This was demonstrated to give better signal integrity and better reliability. The cable would have had a blanking position suggesting that it should be fitted so that this blanking position mated with the missing pin on one of the connectors but in fact on the Toppy it needed to be fitted the other (wrong) way around necessitating drilling out the blanking plastic bit. In fact on most (all??) cables this was just very thin plastic and could be pierced by something with a sharp point such as the pointy leg of a pair of compasses.

Unfortunately since the Toppy forum has recently moved servers the search facility no longer seems to work and I cannot immediately find the forum thread(s) where this recommendation was discussed and the reasoning behind it.

There was also a potential problem with the SATA transfer speed that these adapters could handle and many hard disks had user configuration links to limit the transfer speed which ideally should have been set to the lowest speed possible. The links may have been allocated as SATA I or SATA II on a disk capable of a 3 Gbps or 6 Gbps. Setting the links to SATA I or SATA II compatibility was more than adequate for a Toppy and again could help with reliability.

On your 40 way cable you only had one choice for a working solution.

Reply to
alan_m

What's not correct?

On a Topfield PVR often the first outward sign of a power supply failure was the hard disk becoming unreliable and later perhaps seemly to fail. The process was gradual as the capacitor died over a period of time.

The power supply faults could appear within a couple of years after purchase.

In the early days it was thought only a few capacitors needed changing but later it became obvious that even on repaired power supplies many of the other electrolytic capacitors were failing longer term.

Fixing the power supply often fixed any hard disk problems unless the supply problem had been left too long and some of the power supply voltages had gone out of spec by around 25%.

The common problem was the capacitor in the 5V supply dragging down this output voltage. As this was the the only feedback reference for the switched mode supply the supply tried harder to increase the 5V output which in turn raised the voltages of all the other rails. The more the capacitor failed the higher the other voltages became.

Reply to
alan_m

I had two boxes. I fixed one when on checking the power supply the voltages were going out of spec and the other before I had any problems.

I too replaced capacitor with a 105C rating form Rubycon and Panasonic chosen with a low ESR.

The capacitors that showed physical signs of failing were SamYoung. Checking the specification of these suggested that they should have been fit for the job and should have lasted more than 2 years.|The brand of capacitors that were used for the replacement lasted until the boxes were scrapped around 8 years later.

Reply to
alan_m

That should be SATA disk connector.

Reply to
alan_m

Where is it getting the drivers from Microsoft no longer have any xp stuff on line so that is a no no. However I regularly put an xp machine on line and listen to radio stations on it. Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

In this case Brian the drivers in question are probably those supplied by Topfield in order for the Topfied box to communicate with a PC over a USB link. The Topfield supplied drivers only work on a 32bit Windows OS hence the OP going back to XP or Win7 where they have been previously installed.

There is now an alternative replacement tool-set available to communicate with a Topfield called Antares that has associated USB drivers that work on both 32 and 64bit Windows OS.

The problem that the OP poster has is installing third party software called Mystuff on his Topfield box. This comes with an installer program that can be run on a PC but fetches information from the Internet and transfers it to the Topfield box. However, previously the installer relied on getting information from a couple of Toppy users web sites. These users have now moved on and for various valid reasons have let their old web sites die. (change of ISP, costs etc)

Other users have taken over the responsibility for the installer software and hosting some or all of the files. The old installer may/will be now looking in the wrong place on the internet. A concise guide to what is now happening with the installer and how to use it was posted yesterday (21st Nov) on the Toppy forum, the post can be found at

formatting link
The person hosting this new installer and files also has his own PC software called Topmanager designed to make communicating and configuring a Toppy more user friendly and it may be worth the OP downloading this to see if it can communicate with the same Internet source now required for the Mystuff installer.

formatting link

Reply to
alan_m

Indeed the

formatting link
is always imo the first place to go. Geoff Bacon and others do a brilliant job.

I've got Antares running on a 64bit Win 7 machine and it runs quite well. I archive stuff from the Toppy onto a USB drive from time to time.

I've not done a fresh install of a Toppy with the Win7 machine so can't comment.

I wish some of the mainline manufactures would look at MyStuff - my new LG TV doesn't even come close.

There's another guy on the forums who will send you (or even fix) the complete set of capacitors for the power supply - the one major flaw in the hardware. Wasn't it at a time when there was a global issue with rogue capacitor material?

Anyhow, long live the Toppy - it'll get killed off by HD (High Def). Shame really.

Reply to
AnthonyL

FWIW, I still use a Toppy extensively - I am very tech-literate but a 'late adopter' of new hardware (my 'smartphone' is something like eight years old)

I bought one of the 'recommended' SATA to PATA adapter using guidance on the Toppy site and must have had three or four Hard drives in it without problems. I have a caddy on my desktop and can pull off old programs if need be. There's a utility that you can use under Linux for this.

I also have a raspberry pi connected to the USB port. It runs the 'FTP over USB' (topfield-ftpd?) process to grab stuff from a specified 'transfer' location on my Topfield. Every morning at 6am, any files there are copied to my home server, and converted from the Topfield .REC format to ... MKV I think. They are then put under Plex so that in theory I can stream them at any time.

I too had to replace the Topfield caps, but someone sells a kit at a sensible and that was straightforward.

It's a pity that after all of this I hardly watch much TV...

J^n

Reply to
jkn

I'll have a look.

Right. But all I want to do is re-load MyStuff.

I can't get it to work with an XP machine. ;-) The same one I must have used to load it originally.

Quite - why I'd like it back.

I did mine ages ago. And my brother's one too.

That happened years ago. Its main use here was to record a repeat series on one of the minority channels and watch it all in one go - skipping the ads.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

No, we are using two. ;-)

She had two Humax boxes and they were both unreliable.

I've replaced one drive but can't remember if I went for anything specific.

Result.

Those TAPS can be very good.

I 'talk' to mine via the Windows Home Server (Windows Server 2005 I think) and the Mrs uses W7 for hers?

Strange?

I'll check both of ours and see what happens.

Cheers, T i m

Reply to
T i m

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