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Apple TV with OSX hack - exploring the possibilities...

L

level5music

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 29, 2008
6
0
So, I don't know a great deal about this stuff, but I do know just a few tidbits of info that might actually make this a living room powerhouse. My goals for an ideal AppleTV would be.

1 - Upgrade the hard drive. 500GB or 1TB 3.5 drives have been installed in these things with little headaches. Any input on the hard drive upgrade?

2 - Full OSX Tiger. This would allow a plethora of things, like basic web browsing, but the main trick up my sleeve is...

3 - MESS and MAME emulators. With the large amount of space, I'd be able to keep my roms on the AppleTV and use either USB controllers or BT ps3 controllers (it's been done apparently, not alot of concrete tutorials though), to play through my old school collection. I believe most games should run alright even with the 256MB RAM limit in the AppleTV.

4 - Original AppleTV functionality. From what I hear, it's more than possible to install the original AppleTV software within OSX, meaning you wouldn't lose functionality. If not, I suppose there's FrontRow.

I'm curious how the overall performance will be with 256MB of RAM, but then again, oh my old 1.4GHZ Athlon running XP with only 256MB of RAM all these things ran fine, so I'd expect no less from OSX.

Thoughts? This thing would be a PERFECT media server/sofatop web browser, it's the emulation charictaristics I'm really shooting for. I know I COULD just do a mac mini, but the on-board TV input and 3.5" HDD expandability are what I'm thinking could set it over the top for alot less than anything comparable in performance.
 
balamw

balamw

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
19,366
979
New England
level5music said:
1 - Upgrade the hard drive. 500GB or 1TB 3.5 drives have been installed in these things with little headaches. Any input on the hard drive upgrade?
Click to expand...

FWIW There are no PATA 2.5" drives larger then 250 GB, so that's all you can get in the :apple:TV, larger drives have been used, but require a new enclosure for the drive or :apple:TV. Once hacked you can also add storage via USB.

B
 
L

level5music

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 29, 2008
6
0
balamw said:
FWIW There are no PATA 2.5" drives larger then 250 GB, so that's all you can get in the :apple:TV, larger drives have been used, but require a new enclosure for the drive or :apple:TV. Once hacked you can also add storage via USB.

B
Click to expand...

Whoops.. I'm seeing that now. Even 250GB would be just fine by me. I hear Hitachi and Seagate have 500GB drives on the way.
 
Consultant

Consultant

macrumors G5
Jun 27, 2007
13,314
34
balamw said:
FWIW There are no PATA 2.5" drives larger then 250 GB, so that's all you can get in the :apple:TV, larger drives have been used, but require a new enclosure for the drive or :apple:TV. Once hacked you can also add storage via USB.

B
Click to expand...

Actually there is a 500gb 2.5" IDE drive currently on the market, but it's 12.5mm thick, not sure if that fits into mini or not.

I think some people managed to extend the IDE cable to connect to an external 3.5" drive, but it's not that elegant of a solution.

Mac Mini would work the best, as it has more ports than Apple TV and you cn connect to storage via firewire, usb, or gigabit ethernet.
 
C

consumedsoul

macrumors regular
Mar 14, 2008
149
0
Travel?

A bit off-topic, any of you travel w/ your AppleTV (w/ different cables, etc.) to use at your hotel, etc. by chance?

level5music said:
So, I don't know a great deal about this stuff, but I do know just a few tidbits of info that might actually make this a living room powerhouse. My goals for an ideal AppleTV would be.

1 - Upgrade the hard drive. 500GB or 1TB 3.5 drives have been installed in these things with little headaches. Any input on the hard drive upgrade?

2 - Full OSX Tiger. This would allow a plethora of things, like basic web browsing, but the main trick up my sleeve is...

3 - MESS and MAME emulators. With the large amount of space, I'd be able to keep my roms on the AppleTV and use either USB controllers or BT ps3 controllers (it's been done apparently, not alot of concrete tutorials though), to play through my old school collection. I believe most games should run alright even with the 256MB RAM limit in the AppleTV.

4 - Original AppleTV functionality. From what I hear, it's more than possible to install the original AppleTV software within OSX, meaning you wouldn't lose functionality. If not, I suppose there's FrontRow.

I'm curious how the overall performance will be with 256MB of RAM, but then again, oh my old 1.4GHZ Athlon running XP with only 256MB of RAM all these things ran fine, so I'd expect no less from OSX.

Thoughts? This thing would be a PERFECT media server/sofatop web browser, it's the emulation charictaristics I'm really shooting for. I know I COULD just do a mac mini, but the on-board TV input and 3.5" HDD expandability are what I'm thinking could set it over the top for alot less than anything comparable in performance.
Click to expand...
 
L

level5music

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 29, 2008
6
0
Well.. even 250 or 100GB would be more than enough for emulation. Minus MAME CHD images, I think the total amount of ROMs I have is less than 20GB, which would leave me a very acceptable remainder for other things, and then I'd probably just stream the rest off my Vista box.
 
Consultant

Consultant

macrumors G5
Jun 27, 2007
13,314
34
Cave Man said:
Won't work in an Apple TV, that's for sure. That drive has a SATA interface.
Click to expand...

What part of 500gb 2.5" IDE PATA drive won't some people understand?

http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/
A 1TB kit for MBP 17" is for sale. It removes out the DVD drive and put in another drive in it (so total 2x 500gb drive). The standard HD bay is SATA, but the MBP DVD drive is IDE. Read the specs for the optibay and you'll see that only IDE drives works with it.

So if they are selling a 500GB drive for something that only works with IDE, then someone thinks the drive must be SATA?
 
Cave Man

Cave Man

macrumors 604
Feb 12, 2007
7,112
316
Neander Valley, Germany; just outside Duesseldorf
Consultant said:
What part of 500gb 2.5" IDE PATA drive won't some people understand?

http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/
A 1TB kit for MBP 17" is for sale. It removes out the DVD drive and put in another drive in it (so total 2x 500gb drive). The standard HD bay is SATA, but the MBP DVD drive is IDE. Read the specs for the optibay and you'll see that only IDE drives works with it.

So if they are selling a 500GB drive for something that only works with IDE, then someone thinks the drive must be SATA?
Click to expand...

There are no 500 gig 2.5" PATA drives available. You can check Samsung, Toshiba, WD, Hitachi or Seagate.

The MCE device likely has a SATA to PATA controller on it to connect to the MB(P) IDE interface (JAE connector). There's no way that OptiBay adapter will fit inside of an Apple TV.
 
Consultant

Consultant

macrumors G5
Jun 27, 2007
13,314
34
Apple TV modding
http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/Beginners_Guide

But I do suggest a Mac Mini. If you are lucky, you can get a refurb Mini for $429. But I have not seen that for a few months now.

---
I am not saying optibay fits inside the Apple TV.

Optibay can only use IDE drives. They sell an optibay preconfigured with 500 GB 2.5" drive. Figure out the rest. Note this came out THIS WEEK.
 
Cave Man

Cave Man

macrumors 604
Feb 12, 2007
7,112
316
Neander Valley, Germany; just outside Duesseldorf
Consultant said:
I am not saying optibay fits inside the Apple TV.
Click to expand...

You inferred that when you quoted me.

Optibay can only use IDE drives.
Click to expand...

You don't know that. In fact, it is most likely you are wrong. The only thing we know for sure is that this OptiBay fits the DVD drive interface, which is IDE because it has a JAE connector.

They sell an optibay preconfigured with 500 GB 2.5" drive. Figure out the rest. Note this came out THIS WEEK.
Click to expand...

The ONLY 500 gig 2.5" drive currently on the market is Hitachi's 12.5 mm 5400 rpm SATA-interface drive. The next one out is Samsung's, some time this month, that is also a SATA drive (but 9.5mm). Therefore, the OptiBay adapter MUST have a PATA to SATA bridge.

Can you show us a link to any of the hard drive manufacturers' web sites that show they make a 2.5" PATA drive?
 
K

kolax

macrumors G3
Mar 20, 2007
9,181
115
What I want the Apple TV to be able to do:

- Be able to use the Apple Wireless Keyboard
- An Apple TV version of Safari
 
balamw

balamw

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
19,366
979
New England
Cave Man said:
The MCE device likely has a SATA to PATA controller on it to connect to the MB(P) IDE interface (JAE connector).
Click to expand...

Certainly how I would design it if there was sufficient room. The converter chips are cheap (I bought a converter for $6 retail) and the SATA drives have larger capacity and are cheaper than their PATA counterparts.

I honestly don't understand why the :apple:TV uses PATA as Apple has been exclusively using SATA for a long time now and you'd think they'd want to use the same drives they use in the various MacBooks....

B
 
Cave Man

Cave Man

macrumors 604
Feb 12, 2007
7,112
316
Neander Valley, Germany; just outside Duesseldorf
balamw said:
Certainly how I would design it if there was sufficient room. The converter chips are cheap (I bought a converter for $6 retail) and the SATA drives have larger capacity and are cheaper than their PATA counterparts.
Click to expand...

What we need is a 44-pin PATA to SATA bridge, with the SATA connector at a right angle (and in the right direction), then all would be golden. One could easily put in a 500 gig 2.5" SATA drive in the ATV. By chance, do you know if such a thing exists?

I honestly don't understand why the :apple:TV uses PATA as Apple has been exclusively using SATA for a long time now and you'd think they'd want to use the same drives they use in the various MacBooks....
Click to expand...

I don't understand, either. Unless there's something about the chipset that Apple needed, it sure makes a lot more sense to use SATA over PATA.
 
Pigumon

Pigumon

macrumors 6502
Aug 4, 2004
441
1
Cave Man said:
OS X install breaks audio on the ATV. The ATV's version of Tiger has a special kernel, and no one has figured out how to install Tiger onto the ATV and maintain audio.
Click to expand...

So all the people who've installed os x on their apple tv's have no audio?

I find that VERY HARD [impossible] to believe. But then maybe they're all just hopeful...

Back to the original topic, yeah it seems like Apple TV would be amazing to run mame and all the other emu's on your widescreen hdtv, i'm doing it with a Mac Mini right now.

The Microsoft :( Xbox 360 controllers work almost seamlessly with OS X after downloading a driver from http://tattiebogle.net/index.php/ProjectRoot/Xbox360Controller/OsxDriver

I even repainted my controller to match my mini. :D
 
K

kmj1268

macrumors newbie
May 25, 2009
3
0
500gb 2.5 Ide Pata - Not Available

Consultant....
In response to your ad and link....

Even the link you posted details that the drive installed on the optibay is a SATA drive NOT a PATA IDE Drive. You can buy a adapter (another user, paduck has provided a link where you can buy it and allow a 500GB SATA drive to interface with the PATA-IDE interface on the Apple TV.

Your link...

"What part of 500gb 2.5" IDE PATA drive won't some people understand?"

http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/

Now, click on the link and see where it mentions a SATA drive installed on the optibay. Like many of us on this forum have mentioned, there is not a 500GB 2.5" IDE drive available. You will have to use an IDE to SATA converter to make it work with a SATA drive.

Good luck.
 
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