Since no one else has started anything, I'll try:

Basically, I think we should all get together and start a contest to see who will be the first to get an AppleTV to run something other than its cut down version Mac OS. I know we have a good idea of how it ticks, but I wanted to see who will be the first to get a desktop OS and/or some other media center app running on it.

A successful installation would display a copy of Mac OS, Windows, Linux or any other OS running on it, utilizing most or all of its I/O capabilities (Component, USB, Wi-Fi, etc.) while being in control of it (an HID such as a keyboard, apple remote, mouse, etc.).

An even bigger win would be the seamless integration of some kind of media center software (FrontRow, WMC, etc) with all the most used codecs working properly (Mpeg, WMV, DivX, etc)

Hmmm... This is what iPodlinux was like a few years ago.

If anyone has any other ideas, please, throw them in.

(I know a the race has begun, but it would be cool for an official one to start.)




(Damn those John Grisham books, Im starting to talk in legalese with all the parentheses and etceteras )

wouldnt be at all hard if it had a dvd or cd drive (oh, andit has to boot off of it) thats about all there is to do, that and drivers.... but good idea

well... it does have a USB 2.0 port on it.... if apple included bonjour into the chopped down version of OS X (which i doubt they did) one could simply plug in an external cd drive and continue from there

it wouldnt be a problem if hte bios/efi is capable of booting from usb cd or dvd drive, but im quite sure they removed that :'(

even if they did remove that there could be a way.... i'm no programmer (wish i was) but from what i know people have managed to remove the apple tv hard drive and add funtionality, like the ability to play Xvid, and if they can do that then i'm sure some genious programmer could get a bootable cd-drive and driver working

Well I better get reading that intel efi stuff now.

P.S. if this thing had a giga networking card it would be a pretty darn good server.

I may be off my rocker, but what if you took the hard drive on an Intel based Mac and put it in the Apple TV and tried to boot off of it. What would happen? Maybe if it won't boot, patch it with some of the patches aorund the community so it has SSE2 support and doesn't require SSE3. Also you could try some patches for 'security" if it doesn't have a TPM chip or whatever its called. Intel Macs use EFI as does the apple TV, so that would be a logical starting point. Also, if its EFI doesn't emulate BIOS to boot windows, it will probably have to run window sor other OSes the way someone got hem to run before bootcamp existed. As far as Linus distros go, I would start with something small and simple to try to get it to boo, like GeeXbox which is a media center live c of sorts. You will probably have to use a normal mac to install it to the HDD via an external enclosure, but see if you can't get it to boot and then move up to something like Linux MCE which is a nice customized mythTV media center. With some USB support, you could even watch TV through some USB2.0 device if the right drivers and support were written.

I think somebody should start a website, Like XOM and accept donations to the first to run linux/Mac OS on their ATV.

heres a hint, install elilo and linux on the disk (while it is in another PC). Then get to the efi shell and u can run linux

They almost definately included bonjour with all that streaming... In fact they did. But I'm not quite sure about if that's going to help us. The easiest thing people have done so far is to take out the hard drive and work from there, and a way to run an alternative OS doesn't require a different method, but it would be wayyy more convienient.

Since this is running OSX and probably EFI, it is very different than iPodLinux because half of iPodLinux is replacing the bootloader and the firmware partition, which *SHOULDN'T* be needed for this.

i dont have much expiriance with making web sites.... but i'm going to go ahead and try something in dream-weaver, take a snapshot of it and you guys tell me if you like it and what it needs....

I didnt mean it like that. I was talking about the entire project. this is like the new XOM or iPL project.

Didnt some of the longhorn betas have EFi support? I have an old copy of an early beta, maybe thatll be a step.

According to Wikipedia, "Microsoft Windows Server 2003 for IA64, Windows XP 64-bit Edition, and Windows 2000 Advanced Server Limited Edition, all of which are for the Intel Itanium family of processors, support EFI, a requirement of the platform through the DIG64 specification.", and "Linux systems have been able to use EFI at boot time since early 2000, using the elilo EFI boot loader. elilo is the only means to boot Linux on IA-64 platforms; it can also be used on IA-32 platforms.".

Too bad InsanelyMac is being sold, otherwise a subdomain of sorts could host the AppleTV Hack-It site.

so i burned the image on a dvd and i boot it up but all i get is a blac backround with a glossed silver/white apple

Apache running on Apple TV

To get Apache running on your Apple TV, firstly enable SSH so you an access the box easier.

From there, you can scp the directory /usr/libexec/httpd/ from your Mac to the Apple TV:

scp -r /usr/libexec/httpd frontrow@your.apple.tv.ip.address:/usr/libexec/.

Then ssh into the Apple TV and run:

sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl start

Pow. Apache is running. You can now access the Apple TV from a web browser, in either fashion:

http://your.apple.tv.ip
http://yourappletvname.local

The default httpd.conf file uses the /Library/WebServer/Documents/ directory for its DocumentRoot and also enables the user-level Sites folder, so this also works:

http://your.apple.tv.ip/~frontrow
http://yourappletvname.local/~frontrow

Now, we are interested in whether that opens up the door to make a browser based administration system for the Apple TV. Combined with SFTP/AFP for files access, we believe an alternative system to iTunes could be built for managing the content on your Apple TV.


and

http://www.appletvhacks.net/2007/03/24/ena...ple-tv/#more-22


that stuff should help you guys out, no i did not discover any of it, thank you to whoever the authors are

ive got webhosting space. if there is enough interest, ill start an official website for the competition

Me too! I have TONS of bandwidth and stuff. We could do the onMac.net / notmacchallenge.com type thing too!

http://www.appletvhacks.net/2007/04/01/mac...ng-on-apple-tv/