Building A Firmware From The Toppy

NB. This process is for the "TMS" or TAP capable Toppys.

Sometimes you cannot find the original firmware file (.tfd) that is currently loaded on your machine and you would like to make a backup of it in case you ever need to recover to it. Below is a process that has not actually been tested by me but have been told that it works.

First you will need to enable Telnet on the your Toppy. For that you will need to run a Telnet TAP such as KMTelnet or TMSTelnetd. Make sure that is running and that you can telnet/putty to it from your PC. It will prompt for a username - it is "root", no password.

There is a way to convert a firmware, loaded into a Toppy, into a tfd file. First you have to find out which flash partition holds the firmware (named "program").

#cat /proc/mtd:   

size   erasesize  name
mtd0: 00c00000 00020000 "program"
mtd1: 00080000 00020000 "cfe"
mtd2: 00260000 00020000 "kernel"
mtd3: 00100000 00020000 "data"
mtd4: 00020000 00020000 "nvram"

In this case it is mtd0. Now copy this partition into a file in ProgramFiles:

#dd if=/dev/mtd0 of=/mnt/hd/ProgramFiles/Firmware.bin
24576+0 records in
24576+0 records out

Move the file onto your PC. Now you need a little command line tool, written by FireBird. 
It is in the same kit as this file.  (Bin2TFD.exe)
After calling it with the bin file name as parameter, it will ask you for the SysID and the informational text. 
Use the System ID you see in the Information panel via the PVR's menus.

D:\DATA\Topfield\Firmware>Bin2TFD.exe Firmware.bin
Bin2TFD: SysID = 22010
Bin2TFD: Firmware text = re-packaged firmware

Download Bin2TFD

When running Bin2TDF.exe it is possible to add a system ID for another Toppy model. However, while the resulting firmware will load it may result in a Toppy that does not work. In such cases it will be necessary to use the bricked Toppy recovery procedure to install a native firmware.

It appears that firmware for the TRF-2400/2460 and TRF-5300/5310/5320 are 'compatible'. The firmware for the TPR-5000, TF7100HDPVrt Plus and TRF-7170 seem to be compatible. It is possible that the TRF-7160 (system ID 33021) may be compatible with these units. To date it appears that the TRF-2470 cannot be loaded with the firmware of any other Toppy.

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