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My 750 gig Apple TV

dynaflash said:
EDIT: sorry, just reread and realized you are already trying to use a ribbon cable hence the power issue. Sorry.
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No worries, dyna. I have to get a right-angle off of the logic board. The 5" 44-pin M/F cable is what's killing me. I have an email in to StarTech to see if they can tell me why I'm getting a voltage drop to 4.2 and if that's why I'm having problems. Otherwise, yes, it should all fit inside the ATV, sans hard drive.
 
dynaflash said:
Awesome Cave Man ... Simply Awesome. SO I assume you spent the 16 bucks on the controller then. :)
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Expenses so far:

SATA controller - $28 (PC Connection)
44-pin to 40-pin adapter - $4.70 (PC Connection)
Internal SATA to eSATA cable - $6.00 (PC Connection)
44-pin M/F ribbon cable - $15.95 ($7.95 for the cable, $8.00 to ship :( - CablesOnline.com).

Total - $55 (and still not there yet...)

dynaflash said:
cool. what pata to sata bridge are you using there? Doesnt look like the one at http://www.cooldrives.com/sahadradtoid.html that you linked to previously.
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It's the one linked in post #6, StarTech's PATA2SATA.
 
Cool, thanks Cave Man. Got fired up and ran over to Computer Revolution during lunch and picked up a pata to sata adapter/bridge for 14.99 and a 44 to 40 pin adapter for another 14.99 (there was a cheaper one, but it was bigger so I went with the smaller one.) No male to female cables in stock though, so will have to order one. I guess that leaves me about where your at right now in terms of can hook it up but need the cable to work to complete the job. Am going to run a test setup tonight without the cable just to verify that my components work decent. Anxious to hear what StarTech says about the cable hosing it up.
 
You're braver than me! I'm going to go for this option. More expensive, but I've had great success with this brand, and I like that it matches the form factor of the :apple:TV, and has a built in USB 2.0 powered hub. It's also Time Machine ready.

G-Mini by G-tech.
 
Completely different setup. You will still be streaming, but worse than streaming right from your computer as you will be streaming in two directions from the drive on the AEB to the host computer running itunes then back across the network to the AppleTV. That solution provides probably the worst performance unfortunately. The atv will not stream directly from an airdisk.
 
Okay, so inspecting my stock atv logic board to hdd ribbon cable, I notice a hole in it that must be interrupting a signal from one of the pins. Is it possible that by not using that stock ribbon cable it is messing something up ? Of course that would not explain why it works connected directly to the logic board. Hmmmm.
 
dynaflash said:
Completely different setup. You will still be streaming, but worse than streaming right from your computer as you will be streaming in two directions from the drive on the AEB to the host computer running itunes then back across the network to the AppleTV. That solution provides probably the worst performance unfortunately. The atv will not stream directly from an airdisk.
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Thanks for the info. I see what you mean. :)
 
Update: as Cave Man has, i have successfully run the atv off of an eSATA capable MyBook 750 GB remote hard drive as its boot drive, seems to work fine though am still missing the right angle (ribbon cable) to be able to close up the atv. Instead of a new cable I ordered a gender adapter and will attempt to use it with my stock atv cable. If this gets finished off this means that the atv can store as much as whatever eSATA capable remote hard drive you want to use . With the advantage of no software hacks so you can simply update as normal whenever apple puts out an update. Nice. :)
 
The atv software version doesn't matter at all. It should work just fine with any version, unlike the many software hacks. As far as the atv is concerned its all the same. Just like putting a bigger harddrive in your computer.
 
dynaflash said:
Instead of a new cable I ordered a gender adapter and will attempt to use it with my stock atv cable.
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Dyna - My M/F ribbon cable came with removable pins (i.e., it was really a F/F cable). I put these pins on my ATV's ribbon cable and the problem persisted. I sure hope you get it to work for you. Do you have a link to SATA bridge are you using?
 
Hmm, no I don't have it handy. I can search for it. But I bought it over the shelf. Not a brand I recognize tbh. Physically it looks to be about 2/3 of the size of yours. One question, I do have is where were you getting power for your bridge ?
 
Pins 41 and 42 give 5v, and pins 43 and 44 provide ground. The 44-pin to 40-pin adapter has a 2-wire molex connector to it, with the red line connected to pin 41 and the black line to pin 43. I cut these wires and soldered them to the power connector that came with the SATA bridge, thus providing it 5v. The 12v line of the SATA bridge is unused.

For some reason, I'm losing voltage over that 5" of ribbon and apparently 4.2v is insufficient to drive the bridge. If you look at the photo in post #18, you can see where the power wires are connected to the adapter (bottom of photo), where they're soldered (electrical tape), and connected to the bridge (at its top).
 
Ah, I thought so, but wanted to verify how you were doing it. Thanks. I hope to try mine out as soon as I get the gender adapter. I actually thought about removing the pins from an old drive I have and using them myself just to see.
 
BTW Cave Man (or anyone else) do you notice a small hole in your stock atv ribbon cable, its about the width of one of the internal wires? Mine has one which I have to believe is blocking the signal from one of the wires. It has always been there ever since I first opened it up. Its not in that center lead thats blocked off (the one you had to open up with a pin) its about two thirds of the way across.
 
dynaflash said:
BTW Cave Man (or anyone else) do you notice a small hole in your stock atv ribbon cable, its about the width of one of the internal wires? Mine has one which I have to believe is blocking the signal from one of the wires. It has always been there ever since I first opened it up. Its not in that center lead thats blocked off (the one you had to open up with a pin) its about two thirds of the way across.
Click to expand...

I've seen that hole before on apple IDE cables. I think it stops the cable from being used backwards, I.E. if you plug the wrong end into the board it won't work. It doesn't have any adverse effect on performance though.
 
Cave Man, did you actually try playing a movie with your sata setup ? Or just boot it up.

I have been hearing that those ata to esata bridges are very slow, like slower than usb or pata. I did not try to really operate . but am thinking I might give it a whirl before going too much further and make sure it gives the performance I expect.
 
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