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My 750 gig Apple TV

FritzsCorner said:
Looking at Vortec's pics it seems to be reversed from how I have it hooked up as well. On mine the cables red stripe is located on the right hand side towards the rear of the ATV. I can tell it is correct as the Syba board gets power and shows disk activity for a bit then the ATV will reboot. Every once in a while it will work long enough to get it to the recovery prompt but then it just drops connection again after the reboot. I don't have anything to test the voltage unfortunately, so my troubleshooting for now is limited to verifying everything is connected properly. I may see if I can purchase a similar cable from another vendor if I am not able to make any progress.

I appreciate all your help!
Click to expand...

I tried turning the cable around and it didn't make a difference. The pins pass straight through regardless of the orientation, and the device powers up which means it's plugged in correctly.

These are the exact symptoms I was having as well, where it would restart endlessly and made it to the recovery menu a couple rare occasions. I've tried different cables (same model and vendor though) different bridges different everything and it doesn't change a thing. If you make any progress let me know, I'm sure it would fix mine too.
 
I would like to do this hack, but I do want to use a small HDD like the one with the original ATV, because I would like to hang up the ATV in a wall... Does anybody know which is the biggest (most capacity) HDD that works with ATV and still let me close the case.

thx
 
deorg said:
I would like to do this hack, but I do want to use a small HDD like the one with the original ATV, because I would like to hang up the ATV in a wall... Does anybody know which is the biggest (most capacity) HDD that works with ATV and still let me close the case.

thx
Click to expand...

Last I looked the largest 2.5" PATA drive you could buy was 250gb, which is what I had in my ATV before doing the SATA mod. Maybe someone else can chime in if they know of a larger drive that has come out recently, seems like all the new 2.5" technology is going into SATA drives.
 
I've got my ATV and 1TB 3.5" SATA in front of me and I'm ready to do some surgery. Anyone have any last minute adds that would be helpful before I plunge on it?

Thanks!
 
Hoorah! Everything worked right out of the gate. 900+gb hard drive AppleTV makes me very happy!

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this concept.
 
Cave Man said:
Now you need to get some high-def content on there. :)
Click to expand...

LOL. I'm currently transferring 22,000+ songs over. We'll see if the both the ATV and I have the energy left!

Next stop (big plans, anyway) - put the ATV in a specktone retro II case.
 
Cave Man said:
Try this, it worked for me:

1. Download the 2.0.2 disk image from here.

2. Once downloaded, mount your new ATV hard drive on your Mac and launch Disk Utility. In Disk Utility, click on the OSBoot partition of your ATV drive and erase it. Note, this is the OSBoot partition only and not the entire drive.

3. Use the Restore function of Disk Utility to build your 2.0.2 OSBoot partition by dragging the 2.0.2 image to the Source box and your ATV's OSBoot partition to the Destination box.

Whole process should only take a couple of minutes and you should now have an Apple TV with 2.0.2 bootable.
Click to expand...

Does know how to get the latest OSBoot image? I still can't get my 1TB drive to update properly. Strangely enough, my original 40GB drive won't upgrade either.

NEVERMIND: Found it:

http://mesu.apple.com/version.xml
 
Does the very first post still apply? I just bought an AppleTV and would love to use eSATA to connect my new 1TB drive to my AppleTV.

Is there a simple step-by-step guide for this?
 
Cave Man said:
I think this is 2.3.
Click to expand...

That did the trick, which led to this:

20081211-8xkbtayy6859w3fa8cc1c4i3d5.jpg

So now I wait for 600GB or so of media to sync.

I did not follow the path here exactly. I used the original appleTV 44 pin cable to a male 44 pin to male 40 pin custom PCB (straight pass through). Then into the SYBA SY-BIR-IDESA Bi-directional IDE/SATA Adapter. I used power adapter with a Molex end to power the bare 7200 RPM Seagate 1TB drive and the SATA adapter using the cable provided with the SATA adapter.

Since I use the original AppleTV cable, which is now just routed out of the bottom of the case, I can swap out the original 40GB drive with the 1TB drive quickly for testing...or as is often the case breaking.

Thanks for the info, this post carried me through when I could not figure a out of my hacking adventure.

edit: 44 pin and 40 pin were backwards.
 
ElvisThePelvis said:
Since I use the original AppleTV cable, which is now just routed out of the bottom of the case, I can swap out the original 40GB drive with the 1TB drive quickly for testing...or as is often the case breaking.
Click to expand...

Interesting twist. So, do I understand you correctly that the AppleTV 44 pin ribbon cable exits your case and everything else is outside the ATV ?
If, so, did you fashion some sort of case for the pcb board, adapter and bridge ? Just curious on your implementation.
 
dynaflash said:
Interesting twist. So, do I understand you correctly that the AppleTV 44 pin ribbon cable exits your case and everything else is outside the ATV ?
If, so, did you fashion some sort of case for the pcb board, adapter and bridge ? Just curious on your implementation.
Click to expand...

Yes, the 44 pin ribbon cable is hanging out of the bottom of the case. The PCB board is bare right now. I'll post better pics once the sync is done...in a few days. :D I will build a case for it soon, I'm trying to decide between wood or some type of plastic casting.

Here is a view of the main connection though:

20081212-j55kq63wrh5eek6mdqip4a3c6w.jpg
 
Haha, nice. That pcb board looks somewhat familiar, I saw one similar during my parts search, but wanted everything except the hdd inside the case. I like your moxy. Congrats ! You will never regret it. Have fun. :)
 
dynaflash said:
Haha, nice. That pcb board looks somewhat familiar, I saw one similar during my parts search, but wanted everything except the hdd inside the case. I like your moxy. Congrats ! You will never regret it. Have fun. :)
Click to expand...

Do you remember where you saw that type of board?
 
Avoid Macally enclosures

For those who might be interested, you should avoid Macally enclosures for this mod. I put my 750 gb ATV drive in a Macally PHR-S100SUA enclosure only to discover that after a few hours of inactivity it would disconnect itself from the ATV, leaving the '?' on my screen and requiring a reboot. So I put the drive in their G-S350SUA enclosure and had the same problem. Needless to say, I've since returned the drive to my Rosewill RX81-MP-SC-BLK enclosure and have not had any problems with it.
 
Cave Man said:
Plus, it autodetects if I'm using my DD receiver or just the TV, then selects the proper audio track (AC3/AAC). The Mini (or any Mac) cannot do that.
.
Click to expand...

Hi I am currently considering what whole-house system to use in a house I am just having built. So now I can still run cables etc. The above statement raised my interest. Can you elaborate?

I want all the gadgets to be located in the utility room.
At the moment I am considering an AirportExpress for all the rooms that have in-ceiling speakers. Actualy there is an upstairs and downstairs, so for the upstairs I will have 2xAE so I can have to loops. Together with to Mac-minis I will be able to play different songs or the same song in the different zones(upstairs/downstairs).

Now I am thinking maybe it would be better to buy ATVs instead, they cost just a little more but can also be used for video.

Now to the above: Can ATV detect if it is a pure audio trac? And the route it through the audio out and if it is a video track use the HDMI?

Any advice on my dilemma? Sorry should probably start a new thread, so just interested in the statement above.
 
Summary of How-To

Cave Man & dynaflash,

Please publish a summary of the mod. I've read the whole thread and my head hurts from trying to follow what works/doesn't work. I'm afraid that, if I go backwards to figure out what works, I'll screw it up.

TIA.

--The Stork

P.S. Somewhere in this thread someone asked about the large 2.5" hard drives. Largest one I could find is 500GB (SATA) - Newegg.com has three of them.
 
dynaflash,

I read the whole thread over at the Handbrake forum. Is your first post the recent version? I guess I'm asking is, if I follow your instructions in the first post, I should be good to go?

TIA.
 
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