I'll be even happy if I can get the appleTV finder.app running on my Powerbook or OSx86 just to play around.

EDIT:

We already know that it doesn't require to re-install OSX to enable us to run this program on any installation, and does not require to have the exact disk partition like the aTV.
However it does require you to patch Backrow.framework to change the partition "frontrow 2.0" uses as the location for the "/Media" folder.

Since there isn't (not that I could find) any guide on what to patch on the Backrow.framework, to make "frontrow 2.0" launch...I'm writing one.

Step 1:
I'm assuming that you already have Backrow.framework, iPhotoAccess.framework, and the patch Finder.app all installed the way you like it.

If not look else where for the guide, like here:
http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=46680

Step 2:
Guide your way to:
/System/Library/PrivateFrameWorks/BackRow.framework/Versions/A/
If it's not there go back to step 1.

Copy BackRow to your desktop, and make another backup of BackRow.
If you mess up atleast you only have to copy one file back.

Step 3:
Open BackRow with your prefered HEX editor.

Navigate your way to E03E0 in the editor. There should by two entry in ASCII it that should say "0s4", in HEX "30 73 34".
Change this to what ever the disk id your want to use.

Step 4:
Save the changes, and copy the BackRow you just modified back into:
/System/Library/PrivateFrameWorks/BackRow.framework/Versions/A/

Fix permission of the file, and your set.

Feel free to ask me for help. However if the question's answer is in the forum don't expect and answer back.
Enjoy! (Once IR emulation is done... for me... can't control the darn thing still).

Yeah, that was exactly my (and others on IRC) thought as well.

Although really, seeing as we already have things like MythTV, it would more or less just be an interesting experiement. Even to build a small hackintosh for the sole purpose of an AppleTV like media centre would still cost more than an actual AppleTV.

If anything, I think the existence of the unhacked SSE2 kernel is most interesting, with regards to OS X on beige box PC's.

true. but if you have an old machine capable enough, I wouldn't see why not to do it.

Well, that would be pretty cool, but then you'd lose the features of the computer. I wish there was an app in OSX that we could make to switch main applications (I'm sure the Apple TV's is not called Finder.app...) so that we could with the stroke of a hotkey, we could switch between Apple TV and OSX.

This would be hard, but likely not impossible, since they run basically the same OS, assuming the Apple TV GUI and it's resources are able to run on OSX with little or no modification.

Ok right now...
Just picked up the image from oink.
Heres what I know so far:
The finder in /System/Library/CoreServices/ is the Interface of the AppleTV.
The app needs 2 additional Private Frameworks:
-iPhotoAccess.framework
-BackRow.framework

As you can see, Apple calls the new interface "BackRow". The project name is "Riptide".
Its a modified version of FrontRow.
In the Resource folder there is a file called com.apple.frontrow.manifest
Trying to run it now...

cYa ~Neo

"For those who can't afford one"?

The thing's $300, if you can't afford that you probably can't afford the parts to put your own version together.

I think its a bit less if you already have most of the parts ;-)

Im gonna download it, then restore it to an external drive and see if it works out on my core solo mini.

Ok so far...
Trying to boot from the partition I prepared does this:


Someone knows how to solve?


cYa ~Neo

Got It installed on a Partition on my MacBook Pro. All I get a a Nice Shiny Apple then No activity.. how can Turn on Verbose mode.?

Id Love to get this to eventually to run on the Hack, be perfect for the living room..

Same same for me. Can anyone figure this?

If the system freeze on Apple Screen, maybe its a GUID partition error no ?

There's no installer in the .dmg.. I think that's the problem.

Great stuff !

If anyone can pull this off, the brilliant folks of this forum can !!!

I'd love to dual boot to this on my Mini ..... i HATE the Front Row interface .... and i use my Mini as a Media Server....

Good luck guys, i know you can do it !!!

Or, crossing fingers that this interface is incorporated into Leopard !!! (which is likely)

I looked around in the HD image and found out that the OS is 10.4.7, build 8N5107, if that might help.

99% sure it's Front Row 2.0 - which is coming in Leopard.

appleTv interface is called BackRow, from the Riptide project. It is an offshoot from FrontRow. I'd expect Leopard's FrontRow to be different, though similar.

No. The mini is $600, the AppleTV is $300.
For the average consumer, they would probably prefer an actual computer with more storage, ram, etc, especially for $300 more. The products need to stay seperate, VERY seperate.
Frontrow may be changed to be more functional (right now, it sucks), but if it is too similar to the AppleTV, Apple will be losing sales of one product to the other. They would much rather gain the sales from competitors, no?

-Urby

It's not called BackRow : Backrow is a private framework used by Apple TV. The user that does evrything on an Apple TV is called frontrow.

well.. i've copied BackRow.framework to PrivateFrameworks on my macbook's OSX install as well as iPhotoAccess.. I'm working on modifying the Finder.app to actually open on my macbook, but it doesn't seem to be looking good

USER is frontrow. gui is finder.app, which is custom app renamed as finder.app. custom app is branch of frontrow from riptide project and backrow frameworks. Its not just frontrow 2.0, and won't be what's on leopard.

when you restore the DMG that floating around you're supposed to get this structure:
0: GUID_partition_scheme *37.3 GB disk5
1: EFI 34.0 MB disk5s1
2: 400.0 MB disk5s2
3: Apple_HFS OSBoot 900.0 MB disk5s3
4: Apple_HFS Media 36.0 GB disk5s4

Alright, I've extrapolated all the resources from the ?tv ISO. I don't have access to an external HDD, but I'm going to try to get it running in VMware, because I've heard VMware will run OSX natively.

i would guess someone should try to open and mess around with the "apple Tv os" in leopard

I restored it to an external drive, and lets see what we get when booting an imac for this drive.


It seems that as of this moment there is no hardware support for anything else than the apple tv itself. Getting the still waiting for root device message, seems an indicator to that.

Do you think someone at Apple HQ is sitting there chuckling at our futile atempts at booting the Apple TV OS?

In the meantime, I'm grabbing the iso as we speak, so I will have a go and see what I can contribute

A lot of the apps can be run natively and have peculiar effects in OS X. "Quicktime updater" runs "Software Update". There are some other weird leftovers as well. I found some classic apps - I can't recall where, but regardless... It just makes me wonder why.

anyone workin on it on the hackintosh side?

im getting "acpi" kernel error

anyone else hoppin on the bandwagon and help me out

-DiaboliK

Well, my initial report isn't good (from my perspective)
Looks like most of (if not all) the system is Intel only, so there won't be a chance of booting it, or running its apps on a PowerPC Mac

I will look into QEMU, however

I'd try getting it working on a real mac before touching the osx86 side of it.

Bad, application is intel only. My G4 say this application ... BlablaBla so i can't run anything

but wheres the fun in that?

and i also dont have one to work off of

well that {censored} sucks.. it won't even detect my external usb drive as a bootable HD.. i was having more success with my USB flash drive

trying a new approach now.. I've installed OSX 10.4.7(the os powering appletv) onto a new partition, and I'm going to try and convert it to AppleTV's OS.. should be interesting

the account i created was "frontrow" with the root password being "frontrow" to try and give me the best shot possible

Thats exactly what I did earlier. Although I'm pressed for time, and I've kind of given up for the time being.

Basically, replacing Finder with the stock 10.4.7/10.4.8 one won't load, as it relies on the backrow frameworks. If you can get that to load on boot, then you might get a tad closer at a getting something working. Unfortunately, I'm not too sure how to go about doing that atm. =/

didnt work on my mbp. i tried replacing the kernel, other stuff, the whole system folder, and nothing happened different

what kernel are you replacing?
the only one i can find is the mach_kernel.prelink

i also have another note....
theres only nvidia kexts in there so you may want to try on an mac with an nvidia card
my

-DiaboliK

the mach_kernel.prelink is what gets loaded to ram as soon as the device is powered (and why it boots up so quickly). Haven't had the time to look at any of this in detail yet, but there is a mach_kernel on there somewhere which isn't loaded. Move that to the root and it will know where to look for drivers (I think...). Then drop ina few kexts and see what happens.
I know that finder.app checks for the device model, so it wont work right away, but it should be a start.

i looked all in the .dmg (both images) and didnt find a regular mach_kernel.
altho in the recovery part theres a boot.plist that links to both a normal mach_kernel and then the prelink

so....well i dunno

(im trying to get this workin on a hack BTW, and im getting somewhat somewhere.)

i also dropped in 8.9.1 kernel + r3 and i can get it to load but then as soon as it starts the os it restarts.....
if i use nd21 i get an acpi error.....
hmm....

Diablo...you could try messing with the ACPI kexts to solve that error, in addition to adding in Paulicat's SMBIOS.

Also, afaik, someone on IRC mentioned the actual mach_kernel is present on the other partitions of the aTV. The way the boot process works, is everything is run from the boot partition, until the OS.dmg is mounted, at which point this becomes the new root. The reason for /Seedwhatever folder, I believe. At least, this is the way I understand it. Someone might want to clarify.

hmm with 891 kernel and r3 it will load fine til a point of restart.
altho ill add the ioacpifamily and other acpi raelated kext and find out what that does...
i tottaly forgot about paulicat's smbios.....

can we get a better conglomerated thread Mr. Bond? one hack, one mac?
(this run on pc thread on has been cluttered with both its hard to figure stuff out)

thanks!
-DiaboliK

I don't really want to close anything and start new (and merging/splitting is messy), so I've just edted the subtitles for the meantime. Hopefully that'll make things obvious enough. We'll see....

And good luck with the SMBIOS kext. Although like Urby said, you might have to do a bit of hex-ing to the Finder.app, if it really is hardcoded to the device.

awesome thank you!

ill let you kno how it goes on my end

Man I go off the forum for 8 hours and I miss this whole thing.

Anyway I think the best approach would be to try converting a full OSX installation to be able to use the BackRow interface.

Anybody have a clue so far if having a username frontrow is required?

The other thing I was thinking was if the Apple TV OS does not support other hardware if you add some kext, would it be usable?

Honestly, I think having the right username is the least of our worries right now. Let's actually get the thing *booting* first.

And for all the people grabbing the OS.dmg image and hoping to simply use that...it won't work as is. I believe there's necessary files on the other partition, from what I've gathered looking at the boot process on the AwkwardTV wiki. And even then, I think working from a clean 10.4.7/8 install is the best way to go. I'll try some things tomorrow....

heres my method so far: (two hard drives needed, one blank one with a workin osx86 install)

1. format your blank hd from diskutility to have 2 partitions. and of course have it MBR patitioning scheme.
2. pop in you fav osx86 install dvd then install to the first partition that you just formatted.
3. when all said and done boot into your workin osx86 and not the newly installed one
4. erase everything from the newly installed partition (yes everything )
5. open diskutility and restore the os.dmg to the partition you just erased.
6. now restore the media.dmg to the second partiton.
7. open up the os.dmg restored partition and add your mach_kernel
8. open terminal and chmod -R 644 the mach_kernel and then chown -R root:wheel it
9. pop back in your install dvd and restart you hacky.
10. let the dvd install timer go down to zero and let it load your os.dmg partiton and see what you get....

that what ive got goin so far. if anyone can add to it or tell me im doing something wrong here that would be a great help also.

now let get this baby cracked!
-DiaboliK

I got few more hours before I finish getting the image. I will try that method tomorrow.

EDITED...

Well, thought I'd mention that semthex seems to have succeeded in extracting the kernel from the aTV. Interesting to note that it's 12mb in size (8mb more than usual, according to him), and has quite a few differences under the hood. The rest of his comments are over at hackint0sh....guide up soon as well, he said.

oh snap! thanks for the info!

Ok, I'm pretty sure it's going to be impossible to boot this on PowerPC hardware now.
Time to get that Hackintosh running