Ah, finally got around to getting a 3.5 1tb sata hard drive. I ordered a few IDE to sata adapters off of eBay to test out and Im happy to say that out of the 4 I got, only one did not work... (And that one was the bi-directional one!)
Anyways, here is a listing that I got my IDE to sata adaptor:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300342322119&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT
They also have a few other shops on eBay that are named differently because out of the 4 adaptors i bought, 3 came from the same address (though, different store names on eBay and one from Hong Kong.). And they confirmed with me that they have more than 1 store on eBay so pretty much you get the same product like I did, ha. But for $6.50 shipped in the US, I cant complain any.
Now onto making the housing to fit a 3.5" hard drive. Although Im 99.99% sure i will have to make my own case for it, it should keep the same form factor. Maybe be a half inch longer on one side to accommodate the 3.5" hard drive.
I plan on doing the following:
- house a 3.5" hard drive
- have a 12v/5v circuit for the hard drive and adaptor.
- eSata external connector
- Front (or top) mounted LCD with a button to choose eSata, 3.5" hd, or turn off the apple tv.
I may also look into doing the RCA output hack as well if I can figure out a way to do it software wise.
Anyways, i hope to get some time to do all this but right now i have one more class (c++) that i need to pass in order to graduate so thats top priority
Feel free to post your ideas of what you would like to see the apple tv to do and ill see if I would be able to pull it off with my mods.
David