Is this a Symptom of a blown Motherboard?

[icetrax]

Hi all, first time poster and unfortunately first time TIVO not working. I hadn't watched the Tivo for a couple of days. I sat down to watch and got the Powering Up loop. I unplugged the system figuring that it needed a reboot. Upon powering up, I got noting at all. So I took the unit apart. It's a TCD24004A purchased in Jan. 04 from WK with a 120 Gig drive upgrade. The first thing that struck me when taking the top off was the internal fan that was cooling off the mother board was definitely shot. Next I noticed that when I plugged in the unit, the fan in the back (powered off of the motherboard) was spinning, but nothing else was going on. Neither HD's were even going into standby. So I unplugged the IDE cable from the motherboard and one drive immediately started spinning-up. No data access, but the platters were spinning. Plug the IDE back into the motherboard, and the drive stopped spinning. The other drive isn't doing anything. The other thing I did was power up the unit, having everything plugged in, and pulled the power to the motherboard. When I did that the fan in the back stopped, and the one 120GB drive spun up. I occasionally get a flashing red and green light on the front of the unit. I suspect after all of this trial and error that I have a blown drive and motherboard (and of course CPU cooling fan). I was wondering if anyone has encountered these sort of symptoms and what they might mean. I know testing the HD's externally is a good thing, but we're a MAC house. Thanks in advance!

[WK-Michael]

See the other thread - I recommend trying a new power supply first, but this could be a bad motherboard.

[icetrax]

Thanks for the quick response! Gosh I hope that could be the issue. I did check voltages at different points. The voltage going to the drives appears to be ok at 12v yellow and 5v red. I checked the voltages on the ribbon connecting the Power Supply to the motherboard and got a variety of voltages from around 5v to 30v depending on the "pin". I'm still concerned that the only time the good drive will spin is when it's not connected via IDE cable to the motherboard. Here's hoping I guess.

[WK-Jeff]

If your drives spins only when the IDE Cable is disconnected, that is typically not a good sign, I"m sorry to say.

[icetrax]

Thanks for the help. If anyone was still interested, I am quite certain it was a motherboard issue. I called Tivo and for $149 they sent me a refurb Tivo (Series 2, Dual Tuner) and I was able to retain my Lifetime Service.

Thanks again!