Luke_S Posted March 28, 2007 Share Posted March 28, 2007 We already know that it is possible to boot to an external drive by pressing the "Menu" and "-" keys, right? How far was it able to go as far as booting? The reason why I'm asking is because the AppleTV that I have, more accurately my fathers, I cannot open it up and mess with the hard drive (he doesn't want me to). 40 GB is, obvioulsy, a ridiclus for movies, tv shows, etc... So I'm determined to help you guys figure out a way to boot from an external drive without opening up the case. One thought I had is would it be possible to use the same method to boot to a Linux distro (just command line) and mount the internal drive? If you could do this you may be able to mess with the files on the internal drive without actually taking it apart. Which Linux distro would be better suited for this task? I'm going to see if I can pick up a cheap external drive on my way home form work today. Would a flash usb drive work at all? I know there is a linux distro (can't remember which now) that works on a USB flash drive. Another thing... I don't have an Apple keyboard at my house... would it be possible to use a PC keyboard to do the "Control-S" function? If so, which keys would you use? My only other option would be either to buy an Apple keyboard or borrow one from work, which I may not be able to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bxsci(macuser) Posted March 28, 2007 Share Posted March 28, 2007 there is a linux known as slax which is a derivitive of slackware linux that will go on a pen drive - the have many distos of slax itself so more research must be done on this topic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke_S Posted March 28, 2007 Author Share Posted March 28, 2007 Does anyone know what the required MB is for Slax? I think I'll try using a pen drive tonight, and if that doesn't work I'll buy a cheap external hard drive. I already have a 128 MB USB Flash... So I'm hoping that's big enough. EDIT: Says 256 MB or larger... Any reason why DSL wouldn't be sufficient (64 MB)? EDIT 2: Screw it... I'll just go buy a bigger flash drive. I see that they've fallen down in price since I've last bought one... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bxsci(macuser) Posted March 28, 2007 Share Posted March 28, 2007 well - Apple tv has just about everything you need to run slax -- even with KDE enabled - but i dont know if the apple tv's hardware supports bios emulation which would be a problem because someone would have to make bios emulation work Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke_S Posted March 28, 2007 Author Share Posted March 28, 2007 Haven't people already gotten Linux to load on MacBook/iMac/MacPro? If so, would it be the same principle? EDIT: Hmmm.... I'm not entirely certain... Just need to get some facts strait Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bxsci(macuser) Posted March 28, 2007 Share Posted March 28, 2007 well...no its not the same thing - the EFI that boots mac osx in the MB/MBP/Mac pro/imac supports Bios emulation so that the system can run windows and linux some linux's support EFI anyway but i'm not sure if slax does - if it doesnt then we would need BIOS emulation on the motherboard EDIT: slax requires BIOS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke_S Posted March 28, 2007 Author Share Posted March 28, 2007 Not sure if this is relevent or not: http://sourceforge.net/projects/elilo I guess it would be important to find out which distros have EFI and what ones would go on a flash drive. If not a flash drive, then an external hard drive. Would be cheaper to use a USB flash drive for testing purposes though... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke_S Posted March 29, 2007 Author Share Posted March 29, 2007 Alright... I'm home and I'm ready to start messing with this thing. I bought a 4 GB flash drive, and I'm going to see if I can get anywhere. I figured I would get a 4 GB one because Mac OS X (Tiger) requires 3 GB. So if I can't get some sort of Linux kernal working, I'll try OS X (actually I might try OS X first). First thing I'm going to do is mess with the user mode thing. I borrowed a Mac keyboard and mouse and I'm going see this part for myself. Any help or tips would be appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke_S Posted March 29, 2007 Author Share Posted March 29, 2007 I followed instructions online to get my Mac Book to boot on USB flash drive, but I couldn't even get it to see the flash drive as a bootable media... I even went as far as making it a GUIDE partition table, which the guide didn't mention... No luck. If I can't get it to boot on my Mac Book I highly doubt it will on the AppleTV... Anyone have any ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ptaylor Posted March 30, 2007 Share Posted March 30, 2007 I followed instructions online to get my Mac Book to boot on USB flash drive, but I couldn't even get it to see the flash drive as a bootable media... I even went as far as making it a GUIDE partition table, which the guide didn't mention... No luck. If I can't get it to boot on my Mac Book I highly doubt it will on the AppleTV... Anyone have any ideas? Have you tried this - A link showing exactly how to get OS X on a flash drive using Pacifist: http://blog.bradbergeron.com/2006/11/29/ho...n-a-flash-drive Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GoodOmens Posted March 30, 2007 Share Posted March 30, 2007 Ooo just the research I need. I'll see what I can do when I get home as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ptaylor Posted March 30, 2007 Share Posted March 30, 2007 I've read that the processor in the AppleTV doesn't support SSE3, so I'm thinking that a full blown OS X install isn't going to work... Perhaps if you "hack" the OS X installation so that it contains the AppleTV Finder and the two new PrivateFrameworks, it might work... (As if you installed them on an iMac or something else) If there was a way to make a bootable Darwin image, that would probably be the way to go... It would also be legal to distribute an image based on Darwin, but not one based on OS X... The OS X route would require that we just post the steps on how to do it for everyone to do it with their own OS X disks. Either way, though, I'd be up for it. I want to mod an AppleTV without actually cracking the case open, if I can get away with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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