Dreambox Guides, Tutorials, Tips and Hints

Thanks to FME_fta for this guide.

So that the program Dreamflash v0.1 DanMark works (tested personally) with jtag, the jtag can only have resistences and they can’t have more than 10cm.

The connections are:

LPT————–> Dreambox/Clone

2 –> 100 ohms –> 11 ( Halt)

3 –> 100 ohms –> 9 ( Tms )

4 –> 100 ohms –> 7 ( Tck )

5 –> 100 ohms –> 3 ( Tdi )

11 –> 100 ohms –> 1 ( Tdo )

25 —————— 16 ( Ground)

Th pins 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 e 25 of the port LPT must be shunted between themselves, like commercial jtags has.

Click here for JTAG pinout

Click here for JTAG locations

Now, The science of the thing (thanks to Matrix10 tip) is doing the connect and turn on the box at the same time.

With the tests done I’ve understood better how it works great:

The secret is in 1º do connect to the program and then turn on the clone, but with a certain delay. This delay depends on the speed of your CPU, the faster CPU’s, minor the time/delay (between 0 e 1 seconds).

Change the priority of the program jtag_windows.exe on the task manager for the real time which must turn more real the delay itself, once the program will give maximum priority of the use of the CPU.

About the timming, if it shows you only “ERROR:register test failded” then the jtag is ok, but you have turned on the box sooner then expected, if it shows you the 4 times “ERROR: communication with LPT/JTAG”, then you must turn on the box sooner, or the jtag isn’t ok.

Remmember that you must connect the box always after making connect on the program.

After you must warp/straight the pins on the adaptor switch of the box, so it fits faster on the electric switch.

By end, you must use an electric switch easy to fit, I have used one triple (from the bad ones), but I had to dismount it and press their electric pins to don’t make bad contact.

When doing “write” the program sends immediately the boot, that is the file “blimg”.

The file present in this attachment is the boot of a DM500 and tunner ALPS of CRC-32 9055B110, once again thanks Matrix10, because I’ve tested a boot that were supposed to be for the DM500 and ALPS and it didn’t worked, and this one in the attachment is guaranteed it works.

After sending the boot of 128KB by Jtag, you can turn on the box with dreamup and by rs232 send an image (with exception of Gemini 4.3.1 because some people say it kills clones… )

All programs and files are available on our Dreambox Forum.

How Do I Setup A Mount for Direct Recording?

This guide will outline how to setup mounts for direct recording.

We will assume that the dreambox is setup and you are able to connect via FTP/Telnet and can access the web interface.

Whether we are mounting to a PC or a NAS, we will need a shared folder to record to. For these examples we will use Recordings.

To share the folder…

• Right click the folder and select Sharing and Security
• Check the box that says Share this folder on a network
• Check the box that says Allow network users to change my files
• The Share name: should be the same as the name of the folder

Enable File and Printer Sharing on the PC hosting the shared folder.

• Open the Control Panel and select Network Connections
• Right click the network card and select properties
• Check the box next to File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks
• Select OK and close Control Panel

Direct Recording to a PC

Using the remote select MENU > SETUP > EXPERT SETUP > COMMUNICATION SETUP > MOUNTS

IP: <ip.address.of.pc>
Select CIFS form the pulldown menu on the right hand side
Dir: <name of shared folder on pc><press yellow for capital letters>
LocalDir: /hdd/movie
Options: rw,soft,udp,nolock
Extra: nolock,rsize=8192,wsize=8192
User: <account on pc>
Password: <password on account, if no password leave blank>
Select Automount
Select Mount

A message should appear saying CIFS mount OK!

Save settings and exit from all the menus.

• To start direct recording, select Start Direct Recording from the Blue Button menu.

This may vary depending on what image you are using.

• To stop direct recording, select Stop Direct Recording from the Blue Button menu.

Check your shared folder on the PC and hopefully you should have a recording.

Direct Recording to a NAS Drive

Open your browser and enter the ip address of your dreambox into the address bar. This should bring up the web interface. To mount to a Samba share we have to use the web interface and not the remote menus.

Select CONFIG > MOUNT MANAGER > ADD

Fill in the settings to match your network

The User Name: will be the admin account on the NAS…usually admin.
The Password: will be the admin password on the NAS…usually admin.
(I would advise changing this in the NAS web interface to something other than admin)
If you have given the Recordings folder a password of it’s own, you will need to use this in the mount settings.

Select Save.

Click Mount and if all is correct a GREEN tick should appear. This can take about 10 seconds to mount.

• To start direct recording, select Start Direct Recording from the Blue Button menu.

This may vary depending on what image you are using.

• To stop direct recording, select Stop Direct Recording from the Blue Button menu.

Check your shared folder on the NAS and hopefully you should have a recording.

To Playback Your Recording

Using the remote select MENU > FILE MODE >RECORDED MOVIES

A list of your recordings should come up.
Highlight the recording and press OK to start.

Good Luck!

If you have any questions, please visit our Dreambox Forum.

To flash an image using Telnet

This method will only work with a .img image file.

• Rename the image file to backup.img
• FTP the image file to the /tmp folder on the dreambox
• Telnet to your box and paste the following command:

cd /tmp && eraseall /dev/mtd/3 && cp backup.img /dev/mtd/3 && reboot

To telnet, click START > RUN and type Telnet ip.address.of.dreambox A command window will appear, enter username root and password dreambox.

To backup an image using Telnet

• Telnet to the box and paste the following command:

cat /dev/mtd/3 > /tmp/backup.img

• FTP to the box and navigate to the /tmp
• Here you will find the backup.img file.

How to copy an image from your PC to the Dreambox via Telnet

First of all, you need to have a mounted directory from your PC. Make sure you have the image.img file in your mounted directory on your PC. Telnet to the dreambox and paste this command:

cp /hdd/movie/image.img /tmp/image.img

The img will be copied from your mounted directory to the /tmp folder on the dreambox ready to be flashed. Good Luck! If you have any questions, please visit our Dreambox Forum.

Services and Bouquets

When you do a transponder scan on your dreambox, automatic or manual, a services file is automatically generated with the frequencies and services ids of all the channels found. If you have successfully done a services scan and found all the channels, there’s no need to copy over additional services files.

So you’ve managed to get all your channels and set up your bouquets just the way you want them. The first thing you want to do is back them up to your PC for safe keeping. If you need to flash the image again, for whatever reason, it’s always good to have the services and bouquets backed up, then you simply copy the files to the box instead of setting them up from scratch again. Neutrino and Enigma are different in the way they store the services and bouquets.

Enigma

With enigma images, the services file doesn’t have an extention and is stored in the following location:

services - /var/tuxbox/config/enigma

With enigma, each bouquet you create has it’s own userbouquet file. These files are stored in:

userbouquet.*****.tv - /var/tuxbox/config/enigma/cable

There’s also a file called bouquets (without extention) in /var/tuxbox/config/enigma that you want to backup as well.

So when you’re backing them up to your PC you want to copy the ’services’ and ‘bouquets’ files from ../enigma and all the ‘userbouquet’ files from ../enigma/cable folder.

Once you’ve copied them back to your dreambox, use the browser reload commands below. They won’t take effect unless they are reloaded.
Some images may have a ‘ReloadChannels’ option, usually in the BLUE button menu or User Features menu, this can also be used to reload the channels.

Neutrino

With neutrino images, the file system is more like the dbox2.

services.xml - /var/tuxbox/config/zapit
ubouquets.xml - /var/tuxbox/config/zapit

All your bouquets are stored in the ubouquet.xml file instead of an individual file in enigma.

Same as above, you will need to reload the channels before they will take effect. On neutrino images, there’s usually an option in the Services Menu to reload channels.

How to create your own startup, shutdown, radio, scan and mp3 logos

The dimension of these pictures must be 720×576 pixels in PAL format.
Path where the boot image is stored is /root/platform/kernel and is called bild.
Path where the other pictures are stored is /var/tuxbox/config/enigma/pictures.

The program we will use to create the pictures is called TMPGEnc.

1. Download TMPGEnc from official site
2. Unzip the file to your chosen destination.
3. Double click the ‘TPMGEnc.exe MPEG Encoder’ file and click ‘OK’ on the small pop up window. Then click ‘Cancel’ on the ‘Project Wizard (1/5)’ window that appears.
4. Next screen, bottom right…’Stream type’, check the box ‘ES (Video only)’.
5. Next, bottom left…’Video source:’ click on ‘Browse’ and select the background/photo that you want as your new logo.
6. Next, bottom left… ‘Output file name:’ click on browse and choose the path for your finished ‘new’ boot background/photo and edit the name to ‘bild’ (minus the ‘….’ and in lower case) ie: the line that apperars in the ‘Output file name:’ should read similar to C:\Documents and Settings\Whatever\My Documents\bild ( the actual name of the photo does NOT appear).
7. Next, bottom right…click on ‘Setting’ and check that the value settings are:

…..’Stream type:’ = MPEG-1 Video
…..’Size’ = 720 x576 pixels
…..’Aspect ratio:’ = 1:1 (VGA)
…..’Frame rate:’ = 25 fps
…..’Rate control mode:’ = Constant bitrate (CBR)
…..’Bitrate:’ = 12000
…..’Motion search precision:’ = Normal

When checked, click ‘OK’ to exit the screen.

Top left click ‘Start’, if all is goes well, the ‘100%’ bar appears and your completed ‘bild’ file is in your chosen ‘Output…’ location.

*** If You want to change the boot picture before compressing the image (after the ‘make rebuild-flash’ command ) , just copy it into /tuxbox-cvs/root/cdkflash/boot/root/platform/kernel before executing the ‘make flash-compress’ command.

Thanks to Fergy for initial guide

If you have any questions, please visit our Dreambox Forum.