Make Apple TV OS run on a regular PC?

[Paranoid Marvin]

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

[Lostgame]

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.

[DiaboliK]

anyone workin on it on the hackintosh side?

 

im getting "acpi" kernel error

 

anyone else hoppin on the bandwagon and help me out

 

-DiaboliK

[Paranoid Marvin]

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

[Lostgame]

anyone workin on it on the hackintosh side?

 

im getting "acpi" kernel error

 

anyone else hoppin on the bandwagon and help me out

 

-DiaboliK

 

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

[c4software]

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

[DiaboliK]

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

 

but wheres the fun in that?

 

and i also dont have one to work off of

[centic]

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

[centic]

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

[Mr. Bond]

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. =/

[Soündless]

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

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

[DiaboliK]

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

[Urbz]

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.

[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....

[Mr. Bond]

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.

[DiaboliK]

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

[Mr. Bond]

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.

[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

[Artistan]

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?

[Mr. Bond]

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....

[DiaboliK]

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

[Artistan]

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

[Mr. Bond]

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.

[DiaboliK]

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!

[Paranoid Marvin]

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

Time to get that Hackintosh running