And Apple didn’t just strip the executables, they also stripped many capabilities from the operating system kernel itself.įor example, under version 1.0, it was possible to remotely mount a Windows file share from the ssh command-line. But when the version 1.1 update came along, many of these unused capabilities, such as the AFP server, were stripped from the box. When the Apple TV was first released, Apple included many extra, unused capabilities. But this brings up one difficulty with expanding the ATV. If you’ve done everything right, you’ll get a decidedly non-Apple-like bootup screen with lots of errors and warnings as seen in Figure 1.įrom this screen, you can see that I’ve enabled both the SSH and the AFP server. Once you have the Patchstick built, it’s just a matter of plugging it into the rear USB port and cycling power. (Instructions can be found here.)Īlternatively, you can take your chances on a pre-built Patchstick image found on the torrent networks, but like most files on the torrent networks, there’s no guarantee about what you’re getting and you may be violating Apple’s copyright on some of the components used. Windows and Linux uses can play along, but it will be a bit more work to build the Patchstick. Note that the script and the described Patchstick building process is designed for an Apple OS X system. Once you have the components, follow the instructions found in the zip file to build your Patchstick. You’ll also need to download and mount the latest Apple TV update from Apple, found here. And if you want to follow along, you can download the script that builds it here. This bootable USB stick (called the “Patchstick”) is what I used to get my system going. It was found by the folks over at that one could build an Apple TV-bootable USB memory stick that would do the whole process and more automatically. Fortunately, as time went on, the process evolved and became much easier. The hack required taking the box apart, removing the hard drive, attaching a 2.5 inch IDE adaptor, mounting the drive on an OSX system, copying the file over, adding startup scripts, and then putting it all back together. But the limiting factor for many people was the process of getting it going. The hacking community quickly found that the standard secure-shell daemon (sshd) copied from an x86-based OSX system would start up and run fine on the Apple TV. In this how to, I’ll try out some of the extensions that have been released for the box, and I’ll add a simple one of my own-the ability to transparently synchronize media files from my NASes to the Apple TV.Īny time you’re trying to modify a product like this, the most important step is to get command-line access so that you can poke around a running system and easily make changes. It was quickly apparent that the ATV could easily be extended, since internally it runs a stripped-down version of Apple’s OS X, executing on an x86 processor. Soon after the Apple TV was released, a number of people started taking it apart to see what made it tick. Finally, I was disappointed that the Apple TV couldn’t make use of the Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices I tend to collect on my LAN.įortunately, all these shortcomings can be addressed with a little creative, warranty-voiding work. I also found that I couldn’t use the bulk of its internal 160GB drive since I was synching it only with my 80GB laptop. The only supported video formats for the Apple TV are H.264 and MPEG4. I really liked the product, but it was lacking in some areas-the most glaring being its limited support for video formats. In my Apple TV review, I walked through the basic features of the Apple TV network multimedia player.
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