Marc's Place

 

Fit an Apple TV 1 with a brand new 160GB disk

After Googling for a day I finally found everything I needed to get my Apple TV 1 (with no disk) working with a brand new Samsung HM160HC PATA disk. I summarized the steps I took which I hope makes it easier for everyone to do the same thing, when the time comes. I have also included links to the web sites I used to get information on how-to-do this or that. I did all this under Mac OS 10.7.3 Lion, but these steps work starting at Mac OS 10.5.x.

Tweet



Here we go:

First, get some hard disk attachment kit, like this or this, to be able to connect the PATA (IDE) disk to your Mac. I used this:



Download the needed software: Apple TV Disk Images (Choose the files named atv1-....tgz). When you unzip all files, you get four files: boot.dmg, efi.dmg, recovery.dmg and latest1345972213080.dmg.

When the disk is connected to the Mac, open Terminal and enter the following commands (from awkwardTV.org):

$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
Unmount of all volumes on disk2 was successful

$ sudo gpt destroy /dev/disk2
$ sudo gpt create /dev/disk2
$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
Unmount of all volumes on disk2 was successful

$ sudo gpt add -b 40 -i 1 -s 69632 -t efi /dev/disk2
/dev/disk2s1 added

$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
Unmount of all volumes on disk2 was successful

$ sudo gpt add -b 69672 -i 2 -s 819200 -t 5265636F-7665-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk2
/dev/disk2s2 added

$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
Unmount of all volumes on disk2 was successful

$ sudo gpt add -b 888872 -i 3 -s 1843200 -t hfs /dev/disk2
/dev/disk2s3 added

$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
Unmount of all volumes on disk2 was successful

$ sudo gpt show /dev/disk2

      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6       
         40      69632      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      69672     819200      2  GPT part - 5265636F-7665-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
     888872    1843200      3  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
    2732072  309849703
  312581775         32         Sec GPT table
  312581807          1         Sec GPT header

$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
Unmount of all volumes on disk2 was successful

$ sudo gpt add -b 2732072 -i 4 -s 309849703 -t hfs /dev/disk2
/dev/disk2s4 added

$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
Unmount of all volumes on disk2 was successful

$ sudo newfs_hfs -J -v Media /dev/disk2s4
Initialized /dev/rdisk2s4 as a 148 GB HFS Plus volume with a 16384k journal

$ cd /Users/marcvos/Downloads/Transmission/ATV\ Images/Images
$ ls

boot.dmg     efi.dmg          recovery.dmg

$ sudo dd if=efi.dmg of=/dev/disk2s1 bs=1m
34+0 records in
34+0 records out
35651584 bytes transferred in 5.178842 secs (6884084 bytes/sec)

$ sudo dd if=recovery.dmg of=/dev/disk2s2 bs=1m
400+0 records in
400+0 records out
419430400 bytes transferred in 54.499916 secs (7695982 bytes/sec)

$ sudo dd if=boot.dmg of=/dev/disk2s3 bs=1m
900+0 records in
900+0 records out
943718400 bytes transferred in 122.829526 secs (7683156 bytes/sec)

$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
Unmount of all volumes on disk2 was successful

If this doesn't work with boot.dmg, try it with latest1345972213080.dmg which contains the last version of the support OS for the ATV1.

Disconnect the USB-cable and disconnect the drive from the connection-kit.

The next step is to open up the Apple TV 1. All the torx screws are hidden under the gray rubber mat attached at the bottom of the Apple TV 1. You need two torx-sizes, one for the Apple TV bottom and a smaller one for the hard drive. Unplug the power cord and read here about how to open the Apple TV 1.



Connect the new disk to the white ribbon. There is only one way possible: if you look closely, you'll see that on the disk, one pin is missing and the on the connector a hole is missing. Match these two and the connector will fit. Then, attach a network cable, a HDMI cable to a TV or a HDMI-to-SCART-converter and plug in the power cord. The Apple TV 1 should boot and from then on just follow the on-screen instructions.

---

© 1997- Marc Vos (and others)   -   Privacy Statement   -    Contact Me

On this website, Google Analytics is used to track visitor statistics. These are anonymised data about the number of visitors, which pages they visit on this site, from which regions they visit, which web browsers they use, etc.. You will also see non-personalised ads via Google AdSense. Cookies from Paddle or Paypal are placed when you click on a 'Buy now!' or 'Donate!' button, and possible cookies from Disqus when you use that system to comment on one or more blogposts.
Privacy Statement

Dismiss