Opening the lid - the XMS STB 250Gb PVR

Inside an XMS STB_0456
Originally uploaded by gtveloce

Well there you go, it looks just like a small PC inside, really. 4 screws on the back, 2 on the side, slide cover back and up. Presto, the guts of a set top box.

I had already diagnosed a bad HDD - it had begun to degrade, "forgetting" to record and slowly disappearing (in size) in the "info" screen. It would work one day and not the next.. and then nothing at all. Gone. No dice. Inside the settings you can reformat, but that failed to do anything either.

So out came the old WD 250Gb EIDE (ie PATA, not SATA - getting rarer by the day) drive and in went a new one. Bingo - it works again. The connections are straightforward a la PC and no changes were needed to the (otherwise identical) new drive. I did wonder if it would format a larger drive but didn't have one handy so I didn't try.

If you have one of these the pin code has just 8s in it, not 12345 or suchlike. You'll need that to reformat.