I've searched through these forums and couldn't find an answer. I just bought a used Roku HD1000 and I've managed to get it set up with my HDTV and got it to display pictures from a compact flash card. I've had no luck, however, updating the system software to v1.5.18 (or anything, for that matter). Loading the update.rok file to the base directory of two different compact flash cards and rebooting the HD1000 doesn't do anything. The Roku reboots with a blank screen for around a minute but doesn't seem to update anything. It seems to be the same reboot time as rebooting without a compact flash card installed. According to the setup screen my software level is currently "Deschutes version 1.0.9".

I also tried to update with v1.0.49 (which the Roku website says is the first released software) and would also appear to be newer than my version - but that doesn't work either. What's going on?


PS: Neither of my CF cards are Kingston - I read about that problem.

PPS: Also, I'm loading the compact flash cards with a firewire CF reader hooked up to my Mac running OSX 10.4.2. I'm also using the built-in OSX "unzipper" to unzip the downloaded files from Roku.

nelsonpj wrote:

PPS: Also, I'm loading the compact flash cards with a firewire CF reader hooked up to my Mac running OSX 10.4.2. I'm also using the built-in OSX "unzipper" to unzip the downloaded files from Roku.

I believe the CF card has to be "formatted" with a FAT filesystem. If your created the filesystem on the card from the MAC, I don't know what filesystem type would be the default but this might be your problem.

OK, I've tried a few more things, but I still haven't been able to update the software. I'm now using a Sandisk 512meg CF card, and I copied the file to it with a PC (not my Mac). Still no luck! I also tried reformatting the CF card as FAT32, but still no luck. I've tried versions 1.0.9, 1.5.18, and the latest beta. Files had names update.rok and/or formatup.rok.

Basically, rebooting with the CF card inserted just causes the screen to go black for about a minute, and then it shows the main screen - so I suspect it's not reading the update file at all. Bootup time seems to be about the same without a CF card installed.

Pictures from the CF card can be displayed - so I know the card reader works.

Here's something odd about my HD1000 - the main screen reports that internal memory has 0meg available, but 78% free. Shouldn't that be around 64meg? I'm also wondering why the setup screen says "Deschutes version 1.0.9". Shouldn't that be "Software version 1.0.9"? Were there early versions of the HD1000 that weren't upgradable?

I'm also having no luck connecting to my LAN (Airport Extreme/DSL modem) with an ethernet cable - but I haven't done much experimenting yet to see if it's a configuration/wiring problem. I have no problems connecting a Tivo via hard-wired ethernet to my LAN, though.

I opened up the box and noticed what I think is a small battery on the PC board - what if that was dead? What settings does that store? Could that be dead if the box wasn't used for a while?

Where did you purchase your unit and what is its serial number? Sounds like you managed to get a really early unit, as in pre-release early. If I had to guess, I'd guess that you somehow bought one of the very first units that was sent to a reviewer and somehow managed to get sold.

I bought it at a garage sale (of all places!) It's serial#HR201-ROKU 030520-AD030. It also came with a CF card called "Beta1-64MB Roku Art Pack Sampler" with a few pictures/MPEGs (and now that I typed it, that "beta" in the name also implies it's an early unit, I guess!)

So will I be able to do anything with it besides look at CF cards? It claims an IP address on my network via DHCP, but it doesn't seem to be displaying anything network related on the TV. I tried telnet-ing to the box, but the password doesn't seem to be blank (as some posts here in the forum say it should be).

nelsonpj wrote:

I bought it at a garage sale (of all places!) It's serial#HR201-ROKU 030520-AD030. It also came with a CF card called "Beta1-64MB Roku Art Pack Sampler" with a few pictures/MPEGs (and now that I typed it, that "beta" in the name also implies it's an early unit, I guess!)

So will I be able to do anything with it besides look at CF cards? It claims an IP address on my network via DHCP, but it doesn't seem to be displaying anything network related on the TV. I tried telnet-ing to the box, but the password doesn't seem to be blank (as some posts here in the forum say it should be).

To be honest, I don't know what you'll be able to do with it. There's no telling what hardware is in there. Its probably so old that the bootloader loaded on it doesn't even know how to upgrade.

Dang - that's too bad it's such an early unit. I would like to figure out how to load pictures/MP3's from a network share, however. Do you think this box could do it? I've figured out how to telnet into the box with OSX Terminal:

telnet 10.0.1.2 -l root (where 10.0.1.2 is the address of the Roku)

This logs me in as root and I'm able to navigate around to /bin, /mnt, etc. I'm able to ping my other computers, as well.

However, I can't access my computer's shared folders with the TV interface of my HD1000 - mainly because I can't find an option to look for network shares! My "setup" screen only has an option to set video output - there's no option to look for network shares. Or should a network share just "pop up" on the main screen if it's configured correctly? Is there something I can run via telnet to connect a network share? I see commands like "smbmount" that look like they might work, but I've had no luck.

OK - I figured out the big limitation of this early HD1000... it can't play MP3's! I get an error message that says something like "this feature is not yet supported". Oh well...

I did manage to mount SMB shares from my Mac (set up with the OSX application SharePoints) using a telnet session. I found instructions in an earlier post here in the forums. Just in case another "newbie" wants to do this in future (and found this post via a search) I did the following from OSX Terminal:

telnet
open 10.0.1.2 -l root
mkdir /mnt/smb/server
mkdir /mnt/smb/server/rokushare
smbmount //10.0.1.6/rokushare /mnt/smb/server/rokushare -o username=xxxx,password=yyyy
killall taskview

Note: 10.0.1.2 is the IP address of the HD1000, 10.0.1.6 is the IP address of my Mac, "rokushare" is the name of the SMB share on my Mac, xxxx is the "short" username of my Mac OSX account, and yyyy is the password.

This opens up a network share "icon" in the main screen of the HD1000, and allows me to display the JPG files in the directory - which is all that I can really ask from this early machine, I guess.

(edited 10/13/05 to correct mistake with IP addresses)