Lol

I think I'll give up. I replaced the faulty drive and still the same.

I did find that if I removed the backup battery for 20 mins, then powered up, the box would try to initialize but go to blank screen after about a minute. Not sure why.

I can get a 8 cam for £50 +hdd so may buy myself a late Xmas present.

Thanks for the suggestions. 

Make sure the second drive is now set to master, just in case make sure you use the same cable as the previous master also.

 

Check the system clock if you can, problems with the system clock can cause errors and corrupt the recorded database. I suspect issues with the clock, as when you connected the camera the DVR may have tried to record. Also DVRs that auto detect PAL or NTSC often use channel 1 for this usually on boot up.

 

While the hard drives do not have the boot software on them (usually on embedded DVRs), the do offer information with regards to the recorded database (dates, times, etc), if this is corrupt it can stop the DVR from fully booting. If the DVR boots ok without any hdds then this can be an explanation.

 

BTW the TDVR is quite old and obviously using IDE drives (can be hard to get these days), brand new they were not great and second hand I can only see trouble so I would suggest replacing regardless but a £50 8 channel is possibly going from the frying pan into the fire. 

Make sure the second drive is now set to master, just in case make sure you use the same cable as the previous master also.

 

Check the system clock if you can, problems with the system clock can cause errors and corrupt the recorded database. I suspect issues with the clock, as when you connected the camera the DVR may have tried to record. Also DVRs that auto detect PAL or NTSC often use channel 1 for this usually on boot up.

 

While the hard drives do not have the boot software on them (usually on embedded DVRs), the do offer information with regards to the recorded database (dates, times, etc), if this is corrupt it can stop the DVR from fully booting. If the DVR boots ok without any hdds then this can be an explanation.

 

BTW the TDVR is quite old and obviously using IDE drives (can be hard to get these days), brand new they were not great and second hand I can only see trouble so I would suggest replacing regardless but a £50 8 channel is possibly going from the frying pan into the fire. 

Thanks for the comments, Yes I set the drive to master and swopped the ribbon cables to try variations.

I thought that by removing the battery and waiting for the volts to the rom to decay I would have put the system back to factory defaults and all stored configuration would be lost so getting rid of any conflicts. As far as I know this box should boot up without drives.

Without access to menus I'm stuffed really.

Yes its an old dvr, I installed it in a car repair / mot station around 2005 and its been faultless up to the drive failing. Its cost me nothing and would have been good enough for my use here. I think I still have an account with Y3K but havent had their trade price list for ages

There could of been some BOOT/Set-up programming or drivers on the original master drive which could of been erased if you formatted the drives. Have you seen if you can download some new driver software for the unit?