Anyone interested in installing Snow Leopard on AppleTV 1?

[hackerwayne]

I have successfully installed Snow Leopard 10.6.3 on my first gen AppleTV, if anyone's interested i can post the installation instructions here.

Heres a pic for reference

[mzio92]

Interested...please post.

[chenks]

Snow Leopard running on a PowerPC CPU ?
I smell something fishy.

[orestes1984]

Originally Posted by chenks

Snow Leopard running on a PowerPC CPU ?
I smell something fishy.

They do not run a power PC CPU, they run a 32bit Intel CPU. The Intel Pentium M... there is nothing stopping a 32bit CPU from booting Snow Leopard. There are many Hackintosh PCs with non standard CPUs. Apple TVs already boot Leopard its not that much of a stretch for the kernel to boot Snow Leopard.

[chenks]

Originally Posted by orestes1984

They do not run a power PC CPU, they run a 32bit Intel CPU. The Intel Pentium M... there is nothing stopping a 32bit CPU from booting Snow Leopard. There are many Hackintosh PCs with non standard CPUs. Apple TVs already boot Leopard its not that much of a stretch for the kernel to boot Snow Leopard.

ah yes that is correct.

i'll change my response to.... "snow leopard on a 1st gen appletv, why bother??"

[orestes1984]

Don't ask me, they are slow computers as it is and just barely do what they state out of the box. Running 10.6 on one with 256mb of RAM would be just painful. Snow Leopard struggles with less than 2gb of RAM.

[hackerwayne]

Originally Posted by orestes1984

Don't ask me, they are slow computers as it is and just barely do what they state out of the box. Running 10.6 on one with 256mb of RAM would be just painful. Snow Leopard struggles with less than 2gb of RAM.

Im using this as a cheap NAS/iTunes Music Server as i got this AppleTV dirt cheap (about $50 & it has 160GB HDD). The reason why I install Snow Leopard is because it comes with Screen Sharing so I can remote login from elsewhere.

Things to note before doing anything.

1. It will void your warranty indefinitely! No exceptions! as you will need to tear it apart! (Who cares? LOL)
2. It requires some expertise so its definitely not for beginners.
3. The bottom rubber feet is VERY VERY fragile, handle it with extreme care!
4. AppleTV uses IDE! NOT SATA!

Why am i doing this?
Seriously, for fun. Since i discovered it uses low power 1GHz Intel Pentium M, it would definitely run OSX. But some of you might ask, how about Windows XP? Nope, it won't run because it doesn't have BIOS support. Ive tried rEFIt etc none has worked.

Whats the point?
Ever wanna stream your content on all your Macs without storing it in a pen drive? I have 500+ songs in my external HDD every time i want to play some songs i have to bring the HDD with me. Now with the AppleTV as a budget iTunes server, i can access it on all my Macs streaming music without actually storing it on my Mac. Not just musics, files, movies everything. I also hooked up a 2TB HDD on the AppleTVs USB port so the 2TB is also shared.

Ill write the guide when im back as its very very long. But heres a brief explanation of what i did.

Brief Guide

1. Tear the AppleTV apart, peel the rubber bottom off unscrew some T8/T10 screws

2. Right, heres the thing, if you plan to install it on the original Apple 160GB HDD, you will lose the original AppleTV OS. So i recommend you to buy a 160GB IDE hard disk if you don't wish to mess with whats already on the stock Apple drive. As once you wiped it off, theres no way you could get the original Apple OS back. So ill be using a brand new 160GB Western D IDE HDD and leave the Apple Drive untouched.

3. Hook up the new IDE HDD using a IDE to USB enclosure and hook it up to a Mac.

4. Download iAtkos S3V2, its for hackintosh and its SL 10.6.3. Don't ask me where to get it. Just search on the net .

5. Burn the iAtkos and boot it on the MacBook or whatever Mac that you plan to use.

6. Format the drive to GUID partition (MBR won't work) and make it Mac OS X Journaled. Select SSE3 emulator, FireWire Remove, Seatbelt.kext, EvoReboot, qoopz kernel & Install (detail explanation will be posted later on)

7. After installation, boot the drive up on the MacBook and set it up like a normal Mac. Download & Install OnyX. Its a app to remove unwanted animation and crap from Snow Leopard so it will speed it up. Go to System Pref, enable Screen Share, Files sharing etc and disable sleep and display sleep. Very important!

8. Open the Apple Drive the one with stock AppleTV OS and copy Boot.EFI from System/Library/CoreServices to the same location on the hacked new drive. Repair permission using Onyx.

9. Put the drive back into AppleTV 1 and plug in the power cord, it should start right up to the desktop.

Note:
*Sleep DOES NOT work. It will not wake up once it goes into sleep and you have to force restart, so disable sleep. You'll need to disable it if you're using it as streaming server anyway lol..
*Sound does NOT work. I don't need it to work.
*Its NOT meant to be used as a Mac Mini as its very very slow due to 256MB ram, but its damn suitable to be used as a streaming server.
*Video output only works on HDMI and does not work on composite (you'll get black & white)
*The front LED will flash in amber all the time, im currently trying to fix it.

[hackerwayne]

Originally Posted by mzio92

Interested...please post.

brief guide added

[MichaelLAX]

Originally Posted by hackerwayne

...The reason why I install Snow Leopard is because it comes with Screen Sharing so I can remote login from elsewhere...

If that is your motivation, you are better off keeping it at Tiger and installing the FireCore add-on or NitoTV.

Then if you use the Smart Installer in NitoTV you can have APF file sharing.

[robertthomson]

Great idea, I think I'll give this a go with my Apple TV. Have you managed to update 10.6.8 and run iTunes 10.7?

cheers,

rob.

[atv1fan]

i installed leopard on mine, and use it primarily to run scripts that control attached sensors, actuators, relays etc...

access it via screen sharing, ftp, ssh, etc

also run basic web server on it.

using apple script with gear from phidgets is excellent platform to teach kids how to do basic programming and remotely control a variety of devices, and plenty powerful enough for serious apps as well.

got one atv1 for $50, another off a trash heap.

other than hacking a pogoplug to run arch linux, or a raspi, it's hard to beat this price/performance for the apps i mentioned, and unbeatable if you want a great and geniuinely useful gui, albeit a sluggish one.

Originally Posted by MichaelLAX

If that is your motivation, you are better off keeping it at Tiger and installing the FireCore add-on or NitoTV.

Then if you use the Smart Installer in NitoTV you can have APF file sharing.

[ceraz]

I'm interested in this option to turn my old ATv into an iTunes 11 server and then rsync the library with my mac

Did you manage to upgrade iATKOS to 10.6.8 to install iTunes 11?

Thanks

[ceraz]

Originally Posted by hackerwayne

6. Format the drive to GUID partition (MBR won't work) and make it Mac OS X Journaled. Select SSE3 emulator, FireWire Remove, Seatbelt.kext, EvoReboot, qoopz kernel & Install (detail explanation will be posted later on)

... and hackerwayne ... can you detail these options in the iATKOS customization window?

Which bootloader did you select ? I guess you selected 32-bit only ? Can't find SSE3 emulation, firewire or seatbelt.kext settings...

Thanks

[Dandu]

Hi,

I try to install Snow Leopard, but i have problem : i have not the "SSE3 emulator, FireWire Remove, Seatbelt.kext".

Can you help me ?