14 Comments

Yes, It’s Real: Run MacOS 10.4 on a AppleTV

April 2, 2007 by in Apple,AV with 14 Comments


With the announcement that the AppleTV could run a full version of MacOS X 10.4 landing on April fools day everyone was skeptical (myself included, especially considering the site that hosted the hack is offline now), so over at UNEASYcental we tore apart our poor little AppleTV and can confirm that it the hack does work.

So for everybody’s benefit (and learning the hard way from another tutorial) here is how you install MacOS 10.4 on an AppleTV. PLEASE NOTE: I highly recommend that you DO NOT install over your existing drive, rather purchase or reuse another laptop hard drive.

  • Remove the old drive from the Apple TV
  • Connect the new drive to a regular Mac (via a Firewire or USB drive dock)
  • Boot your Mac using the OS X CD’s that came with your Mac (Be sure to use the Intel version) and using disk utility format the drive into one partition using the GUID partition tables – CALL IT OSBOOT
  • Install MacOS X onto the new drive, avoid installing all the extra’s
  • Once the install is done, boot from this drive and follow the MacOS setup
  • If the OS is not up to date, bring it up to at least version 10.4.8
  • Reboot your Mac your normal OS X install
  • Plug in your old AppleTV drive and copy the file boot.efi which is located on /System/Libary/Coreservices/boot.efi
  • Remove the old AppleTV drive and put it in SAFE storage
  • Plug in the new into your Mac
  • Remove mach_kernel from root of the drive containg the ATV install by typing in the terminal sudo rm /Volumes/OSBoot/mach_kernel
  • You must replace it with a customized mach_kernel that you can find here
  • Remove boot.efi by typing in the terminal sudo rm /System/Libary/Coreservices/boot.efi
  • Copy the AppleTV’s boot.efi (That you copied before) to the new drive
  • Run the “bless” command in the terminal by typing bless --folder=/Volumes/OSBoot/System/Library/CoreServices -- file=/Volumes/OSBoot/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi --setBoot (This is all on one line)
  • On the new AppleTV drive delete all the Nvidia kexts (all located in /System/Library/Extensions and begin with NVD – there should be 5)
  • Transfer the new drive back to the Apple TV
  • Turn on the AppleTV

The OS will take about a minute or three to load fully, but after the boot you will find the AppleTV is quite a snappy machine. I also ran into some problems that the Picture would not fit all on my HDTV, but that is a minor side effect. Sadly there is no sound via the analog audio jacks.

img_0659.jpg

For those extra curious I have included a detailed PDF of the AppleTV SPECS according to the Apple System Profiler. Also it goes without saying that this will VOID your warranty and if not careful potentially break your AppleTV — Proceed with caution!

Any Questions feel free to drop them in the comments!


  • elchubi

    there weren’t any at Laredo’s CC today :(

  • http://www.donawilson.com/ Don Wilson

    Site looks online to me =)

  • Per-Erik Broz

    enable underscan on your tv (or disable overscanning) and you will get the whole picture

  • Olivier

    I think I’ll just buy a used mini for the same price, or save the extra $250 needed to get a Cored Duo mini with 1080p output and playback, 5.1 audio, up to 2 gigs of ram, firewire port, etc. etc.

    Some people’s time really isn’t worth anything to them.

    The one thing that would make sens here is a Port of Xbox Media Center (they could call it AMC, A for Apple of course).

    But hey, you guys are free to do whatever in your free time.

  • http://www.uneasysilence.com Dan

    I just did it to see if i could do it :)

  • G H I S C O T T

    While reading the step by step. . . .

    “You must replace it with a customized mach_kernel that you can find on popular torrent sites”

    Warning! Warning! Security Alert! How do you know that the file you get has not been messed with ?

  • http://www.uneasysilence.com Dan

    There is no real way to tell, but they have shown the code and are trying to be as transparent as possible.

  • chad

    Dan you rebel!

  • mitch

    How come its showing a go7300 graphics card with 256 meg vram. I thought the Apple TV only had 64meg vram

  • http://nwinton.wordpress.com Neil Winton

    I wonder if Apple are about to go public with an upgrade to the ATV? If you think back a year, the first hackers announced how to get Windows running on an Intel Mac so Apple had to let on about BootCamp… maybe there is an official Apple version of the Apple TV running OSX in the wings?

    It would certainly fit in with Steve Job’s desire to be at the forefront of the digital revolution!

  • G H I S C O T T

    I got to go with oliver on this one. The mac mini is a real nice set-top and my sole beef is with the power supply brick. The price difference is chump change.

  • Cain

    Does the sound work. I have had hints that it does but no confirmation. If it does then it is perfect for many people’s needs.

  • Cain

    Does the digital sound work. I have had hints that it does but no confirmation. If it does then it is perfect for many people’s needs.

  • Jochen

    Maybe someone could post MD5 sums of important files, e.g. boot.efi, so I know that I copied the right files from my AppleTV’s hard drive.

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