1TB hard drive for gen 1

billhinge · Dec 27, 2013

Partitioned but still blinking amber

Hi

Don't know if this was ever resolved but I did manage to partition my 1TB WD drive, however still getting blinking yellow light (starting up)

I originally tried running ATVcloner but couldn't get the details right and I thought life was too short to spend days fiddling so I used iPartition instead along with dd

If you want to run ATVcloner as root (although I guess it is is a potential security risk) the do the following

sudo chmod -R 4777 AtvCloner.ap
sudo chown -R root AtvCloner.app

and it will ask for a password and run as root but I couldn't get the block details correct so I decided to use an app called iPartition instead

I was able to match the correct config - see pic

Code:

erics-Mac-Pro:desktop ericnoodle$ sudo gpt show /dev/disk0
Password:
       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6         
          40       69632      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
       69672      819200      2  GPT part - 5265636F-7665-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
      888872     1843200      3  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
     2732072  1950530912      4  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  1953262984      262151         
  1953525135          32         Sec GPT table
  1953525167           1         Sec GPT header
erics-Mac-Pro:desktop ericnoodle$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     35.7 MB    disk0s1
   2:             Apple_Recovery                         419.4 MB   disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS OSBoot                  943.7 MB   disk0s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS Media                   998.7 GB   disk0s4
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Store                   2.0 TB     disk1s2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Mavericks               999.9 GB   disk2s2
/dev/disk4
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *998.1 GB   disk4
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk4s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Time Machine Backups    997.7 GB   disk4s2

Having set the partition sizes I used dd to copy the disc images across, I assume the file permissions in the dmg's were correct ?

Unfortunately the ATV didn't boot. When I tried booting from the drive attached to a mac I get the error 'can't find mach_kernel' from the disc recognised as Tiger - there isn't a boot file called mach_kernel as found in OS X only a precompiled cache which supposedly contains the mach_kernel

I do know that the original ATV disk was dead because it wasn't readable from OS X (10.9.1) but I'm hoping the logic board isn't also dead (I can hear the PSU hum which I suppose is good). If all else fails I'll try a linux distro as a test that the hardware still works

Anyone got any suggestions?

billhinge · Dec 28, 2013

A little progress

After several hours fiddling I remembered I had an old laptop with a 40GB PATA drive so I decided to strip it out for a test

I used ATVCloner and the ATV boot, efi and recovery images I downloaded from the internet and installed on the 40GB disk

I hooked up the disk to the Apple cable and booted. Unlike my previous expo with the SATA disk there was a noise from the old PATA disk and the fan was working. This didn't happen when I used the SATA drive. The yellow light was still flashing and from this I deduce that

a) The logic board is still working
b) There is an issue using my particular SATA-PATA adapter on ATV

Reconnecting the 40GB drive back on the computer I went to OSBoot/var/logs and found that there was no boot log indicating that the kernel wasn't booting

So my assumption is

a) Perhaps I need to bless the drive ?
b) The file permissions are wrong ?
c) There is something missing from the dmg's I downloaded
d) I need to do further steps after using ATVCloner e.g. are there HDMI patches needing loading?

Anything obvious that I'm missing?

billhinge · Dec 28, 2013

Tried the USB install of CrystalUbuntu and Openelec without success, however still hearing whirring drive and fan etc

I'm going to do the factory reinstall from the Openelec download to rule out a bad set of dmg's

billhinge · Dec 29, 2013

Managed to get old drive working again

I fished the old ATV drive out of the rubbish bin (literally) and gave it another go, this time ensuring the SATA PATA connection was a really tight fit. This time I was able to read the contents of the drive and back up with ATVCloner.

Checked the logs on OSBoot & Media, no errors concurrent with the date it stopped working - a few memory leak errors though !

Interestingly enough I can see the contents of the media disk - the last thing I was doing before the ATV died was downloading Iron Man 3 overnight

Anyways, hopefully the data I can salvage off the disk can help ... next stop electrical testing and get the logic analyser set up

billhinge · Dec 30, 2013

I completely disassembled everything down to the logic board, cleaned of the the old thermal compound and re-applied some better OCZ arctic freeze compound, gave everything a good clean etc. There doesn't appear to be anything wrong hardware wise. I'm reading 5.08 volts at the logic board and 5.07 volts at the hard disk

Had a look around the file structure on the disk, updated the com.apple.boot.plist to add the -v boot flag and added the boot fail png file to both recovery and OSBoot partitions. However, still not getting output on boot.
I did notice that OSBoot on recovery is a smaller version of the OSBoot image, did try to replace the recovery image with the latest OSBoot image from Apple but it doesn't fit.

My assumption is that the efi partition is broke or there is some undiagnosed fault that passes the self test but prevents boot or that the efi is in some way corrupt (certainly diskutil doesn't like it)

Anyway, purchased a s/h 40GB model from ebay so will use that as my 1TB and Crystal HD upgrade guinea pig when it arrives and keep this one for spares or tinkering with (may try installing Tiger to see if that works ). At least I learned how this thing works now!

billhinge · Dec 31, 2013

My ebay purchased 40GB ATV turned up after only 1 day, now installed ssh via patchstick

There is an obvious difference between my old file structure and the ebay ATV file structure

ebay 40GB

Code:

-bash-2.05b$ whoami
frontrow
-bash-2.05b$ ls -al
total 16602
drwxrwxr-t   26 root  admin      986 Dec 31 14:05 .
drwxrwxr-t   26 root  admin      986 Dec 31 14:05 ..
d-wx-wx-wt    2 root  admin       68 Jan 30  2010 .Trashes
-rw-r--r--    1 root  wheel        0 Dec 31 14:53 .readwrite
dr-xr-xr-x    2 root  wheel      128 Dec 31 14:05 .vol
drwxrwxr-x    3 root  admin      102 Jan 30  2010 Applications
-rw-r--r--    1 root  admin     1024 Jan 30  2010 Desktop DB
-rw-r--r--    1 root  admin        2 Jan 30  2010 Desktop DF
drwxrwxr-t   24 root  admin      816 Jan 30  2010 Library
drwxr-xr-x    5 root  wheel      170 Dec  1  2006 Network
drwxr-xr-x    7 root  admin      238 Jan 30  2010 SeedScratch
drwxr-xr-x    4 root  wheel      136 Jan 30  2007 System
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  admin       19 Jan 30  2010 Users -> ./mnt/Scratch/Users
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  admin       21 Jan 30  2010 Volumes -> ./mnt/Scratch/Volumes
drwxr-xr-x   37 root  wheel     1258 Jan 30  2010 bin
dr-xr-xr-x    2 root  wheel      512 Dec 31 14:05 dev
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  admin       11 Jan 30  2010 etc -> private/etc
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  admin        9 Dec 31 14:05 mach -> /mach.sym
-r--r--r--    1 root  admin   615752 Dec 31 14:05 mach.sym
-rw-r--r--    1 root  wheel  7839778 Jan 30  2010 mach_kernel.prelink
drwxr-xr-x    5 root  admin      272 Nov 23 15:42 mnt
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  admin       21 Jan 30  2010 private -> ./mnt/Scratch/private
drwxr-xr-x   53 root  wheel     1802 Jan 30  2010 sbin
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  admin       11 Jan 30  2010 tmp -> private/tmp
drwxr-xr-x    9 root  wheel      306 Dec 31 14:53 usr
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  admin       11 Jan 30  2010 var -> private/var
-bash-2.05b$

and old broken 160GB ATV (this is from a disk image of the ATV OSBoot partition)

Code:

ericsMacPro:OSBoot ericnoodle$ ls -la
total 15336
drwxrwxr-t  26 ericnoodle  staff      918  2 Oct  2008 .
drwxrwxrwt@  7 root        admin      238 31 Dec 14:20 ..
d-wx-wx-wt   2 ericnoodle  staff       68  2 Oct  2008 .Trashes
drwxr-xr-x@  2 ericnoodle  staff       68 24 Oct  2006 .vol
drwxrwxr-x   3 ericnoodle  staff      102  2 Oct  2008 Applications
-rw-r--r--@  1 ericnoodle  staff     1024  2 Oct  2008 Desktop DB
-rw-r--r--@  1 ericnoodle  staff        2  2 Oct  2008 Desktop DF
drwxrwxr-t  24 ericnoodle  staff      816  2 Oct  2008 Library
drwxr-xr-x@  5 ericnoodle  staff      170  1 Dec  2006 Network
drwxr-xr-x   7 ericnoodle  staff      238  2 Oct  2008 SeedScratch
drwxr-xr-x   4 ericnoodle  staff      136 30 Jan  2007 System
lrwxr-xr-x   1 ericnoodle  staff       19  2 Oct  2008 Users -> ./mnt/Scratch/Users
lrwxr-xr-x   1 ericnoodle  staff       21  2 Oct  2008 Volumes -> ./mnt/Scratch/Volumes
drwxr-xr-x@ 37 ericnoodle  staff     1258  2 Oct  2008 bin
drwxr-xr-x@  2 ericnoodle  staff       68  1 Dec  2006 dev
lrwxr-xr-x@  1 ericnoodle  staff       11  2 Oct  2008 etc -> private/etc
lrwxr-xr-x@  1 ericnoodle  staff       11  2 Oct  2008 mach -> mach_kernel
-rw-r--r--   1 ericnoodle  staff  7811870  2 Oct  2008 mach_kernel.prelink
drwxr-xr-x   4 ericnoodle  staff      136  2 Oct  2008 mnt
lrwxr-xr-x   1 ericnoodle  staff       21  2 Oct  2008 private -> ./mnt/Scratch/private
drwxr-xr-x@ 53 ericnoodle  staff     1802  2 Oct  2008 sbin
lrwxr-xr-x@  1 ericnoodle  staff       11  2 Oct  2008 tmp -> private/tmp
drwxr-xr-x@  8 ericnoodle  staff      272  2 Oct  2008 usr
lrwxr-xr-x@  1 ericnoodle  staff       11  2 Oct  2008 var -> private/var
ericsMacPro:OSBoot ericnoodle$

Note the 160GB box has a sym link mach to mach_kernel (doesn't exist) and the new box has sym link to mach.sym . The kernel sizes are different to Strange as both boxes should be running the latest apple software, I confirmed this on the 40GB ATV. The filestamps on the 160GB look old as well

Its almost as if the 160GB did a factory reversion and fugged up in the middle ?
I'm wondering if the EFI & Recovery partitions are similarly affected (these are obviously the first 2 stages in the boot process)

billhinge · Dec 31, 2013

Just tried booting the old apple box with the working patchstick, didn't work.

So the assumption must be that if the drive is getting power and the patchstick is acting as a recovery disk then the EFI partition must be at fault?

billhinge · Jan 3, 2014

I managed to test the boot logic of the ATV drive by attaching a semi random set of pins to the end of the pata cable according the the layout I found here

http://superuser.com/questions/554551/is-there-a-cable-that-is-2-5-44-pin-ide-on-both-ends-or-an-alternative-to-pl

But since I don't know what the boot sequence should be I had to guess which pins to check. After a couple of attempts there is some activity on the pins - see pic ch 1, 2 and 8 go high shortly after boot (pin 41, 17, 27)

So my deduction is the the logic board is OK, cable is OK - otherwise the board would fail self test and not attempt to boot
so it is either hard drive control or more probably boot software is broken - EFI

billhinge · Jan 3, 2014

Meanwhile the 40GB ATV has been updated with Crystal HD and XMBC etc and is working fine, next step is to upgrade to internal 1TB disk

Will attempt to swap hard drive from the 40GB disk into the faulty apple to see if it boots

billhinge · Jan 3, 2014

Boot sequence with HD attached

I managed to squeeze the logic probes onto the HD pins when doing a boot, still not sure what this means but with the probes attached to the HD data lines you can clearly see there is some communication between cpu and HD

So I think the yellow flashing light is a symptom of a screwed EFI boot partition (prior to handover to Repair partition boot - hence why USB recovery doesn't work ?)

billhinge · Jan 3, 2014

Interesting experiment

I opened the working ATV again and removed the 40GB working drive

I then installed it in the non working ATV
Result - no boot - black screen

I connected the working 40GB ATV to the TV and put the old 160GB drive that I though was defective - perfect boot and did software update - at the correct current software

This means there is a hardware fault after all on the old ATV despite the absence of a yellow-white flash (just one more expt to try but it can't be that simple, can it?)

So I then switched the 160GB drive out of the working ATV and replaced it with a 1TB data made with ATVcloner - got boot followed by ATV disc with ?

Ah well, some progress at least

----------

potatis said:
Omne666: not sure if it fits in an untouched unit.., my unit (bought 2nd hand) was pre modded to make it fit. I think basically you can cut off half of the long metal rod next to the fan.

You can unscrew the bar - need a no 8 torx for the small screw beneath the hole and no 15 torx for the other retainer ( that holds the 10 torx screw )

billhinge · Jan 3, 2014

927.21 gb

My ATV 1 is now Crystal HD/ iTunes/ XMBC and 1TB internal enabled

Just need to transfer the contents of off the old 40GB disk into iTunes

was a struggle but got there in the end!

plus managed to get the rubber off with ripping it!

Delmar · Jan 3, 2014

That's good to hear. So what was the problem?

billhinge · Jan 3, 2014

There was no problem - just need the correct drive partition and boot image

bog standard ebay pata sata bridge - cheap one from ebay

stock cable - no crossover stuff (red herring ?)

just ensure that you have the correct dmg images

for added confidence add -v to our recovery com.apple.boot.plist to give you diagnostics (why stuff doesn't work ? then fix)

if you are familiar with hackintosh builds it is straight forward - apple tv is just cut down Tiger (hack) after all )

You need a working ATV to try out all the working options, once you have that then you can see where the faulty one one fails (and fix accordingly) - If you have a working ATV then its easy - just take a disk image

and dd to correctly sized 1TB hard drive

I didn't change the default apple partitions, just used the awkward TV guide and Ipartition and dd - unfortunately I can't remember which disk image I used (bad config management ) - it was either a download from apple or a the 40 Gb working ATV - (disregard my early posts) but there is no magic here!

An easy alternative
here is any easy way to run ATVcloner as root - drag /Users/<your user>/Desktop/AtvCloner.app/Contents/MacOS /ATVCloner into a root terminal shell on a mac and it will run as root - ignore the error (i.e. Show package contents - info etc)

billhinge · Jan 3, 2014

sync with iTunes

Pic of iTunes sync - will load ssh etc after sync ...

I noticed with the new hard disk I was invited to register my new Apple TV - unlike the old 40GB ATV which didn't give me this option ...

Delmar · Jan 3, 2014

I have a Apple Tv1 that with a 300GB HDD that I have used for a couple years now & it works great. I have recently bought a couple used ATV1's that I plan on experimenting with.

Do you know if it's possible to take the working HDD & use Carbon Copy Cloner to simply clone the HDD for a new one? This seems to be the easiest way to make a new HDD.

billhinge · Jan 4, 2014

Not sure how Carbon Cloner works but I guess assuming your partitions are correct and you can get it to run with appropriate access then why not try it

This is how my TB disk is partitioned - disk 2 note the size and type and remember OS X can't read an Apple TV recovery partition, can CC?

Code:

root# diskutil list                                                    
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Store                   1.8 TB     disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS ATVMediaClone           158.5 GB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Mavericks               999.9 GB   disk1s2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     35.7 MB    disk2s1
   2:             Apple_Recovery                         419.4 MB   disk2s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS OSBoot                  943.7 MB   disk2s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS Media                   998.8 GB   disk2s4
/dev/disk4
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        *732.3 MB   disk4
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         32.3 KB    disk4s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS OSBoot                  732.3 MB   disk4s2

Delmar · Jan 4, 2014

billhinge said:

Not sure how Carbon Cloner works but I guess assuming your partitions are correct and you can get it to run with appropriate access then why not try it

This is how my TB disk is partitioned - disk 2 note the size and type and remember OS X can't read an Apple TV recovery partition, can CC?

Code:

root# diskutil list                                                    
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Store                   1.8 TB     disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS ATVMediaClone           158.5 GB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Mavericks               999.9 GB   disk1s2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     35.7 MB    disk2s1
   2:             Apple_Recovery                         419.4 MB   disk2s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS OSBoot                  943.7 MB   disk2s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS Media                   998.8 GB   disk2s4
/dev/disk4
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        *732.3 MB   disk4
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         32.3 KB    disk4s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS OSBoot                  732.3 MB   disk4s2

As far as I know CCC clones the recovery partition. I'll check on that. I am going to give it a try next week sometime when I have a chance to mess around with one of the used ATV1's I picked up on Craigslist.

billhinge · Jan 4, 2014

Fair enough, I don't have Carbon Cloner so not sure how it works so I'm only guessing

dynaflash · Jan 7, 2014

billhinge said:
An easy alternative
here is any easy way to run ATVcloner as root - drag /Users/<your user>/Desktop/AtvCloner.app/Contents/MacOS /ATVCloner into a root terminal shell on a mac and it will run as root - ignore the error (i.e. Show package contents - info etc)

Thanks for that, I never tried it. Mavericks has different sandboxing since I wrote atvcloner on leopard. Good tip.

1TB hard drive for gen 1

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