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Apple TV Hack Redux

Apple TV Hack Redux

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Although I have heard good things about Apple’s new AppleTV, I have yet to buy one for myself.

The reason for this is simple. I have a first-generation AppleTV and still find it to be quite functional. In fact, I prefer to have the luxury of built-in storage. Sometimes I prefer to turn on my TV and just start listening to my music library or watch from my movie library without having to get up and go turn on another streaming device.

The latest AppleTV OS (3.02) is still hackable with the ATVUSB-creator patchstick (version 1.0.b13). This patchstick can be created with both the OS X and Windows platforms. But there are a few things you should know if you plan to hack your first generation AppleTV.

Preparing Your AppleTV


If you have an un-hacked AppleTV, then you need to make sure that you first update your OS to version 3.02 using the Update Software under the General Settings menu.

If you’ve previously hacked your AppleTV, the best advice I can give you is to do a factory reset, then update to version 3.02. I have had nothing but problems when trying to apply this hack on top of a previous hack, and found that I’ve avoided wasted time and grief by simply resetting, updating to version 3.02, and then applying this hack. ( NOTE: THIS WILL DELETE ALL YOUR EXISTING DATA – MUSIC, MOVIES, ETC. – ON YOUR APPLETV. BE SURE TO BACKUP YOUR EXISTING DATA BEFORE DOING THIS FACTORY RESET! )

At this point, you should be starting with an un-hacked AppleTV at version 3.02 of the operating system.

Creating The Patchstick

To create the patchstick, you’ll need a flashdrive that is no smaller than 512MB. This process will completely wipe clean the flashdrive, so be sure that you first backup any desired data on the drive.

Follow these steps:

    1. Download the ATVUSB creator files (Mac OSX (intel/ppc) version of atvusb-creator; Windows (XP/Vista) version of atvusb-creator)
    2. Plug your flashdrive into a USB port on your computer.
    3. Unzip the file and double-click the atvusb-creator file. You should see this window with these settings:

The atvusb-creator settings window

IMPORTANT: Make sure the USB Target Device is pointing to your flashdrive!

  1. Click on the Create Using -> button
    This process can take up to 10 minutes, depending on the speed of your flashdrive.

    The progress screen will indicate completion.

  2. That’s it. Now you’re ready to bring this patchstick to your AppleTV!

 

Applying The Patchstick To Your AppleTV

Unplug the power to your AppleTV and insert the patchstick into the USB port. Then, plug in the power to your AppleTV.

You will see an unusual icon:

And then, a long series of text will scroll by. This process usually takes about a minute or two. Once the text stops scrolling for longer than 20 seconds or so, the hack has been completed.

Pull the patchstick out and unplug the power to the AppleTV.

Now plug in the power and let your AppleTV go through the start up process. If the patch has been successful, you should note the addition of two menu items in the navigation: Software Menu and Launcher.

Note the addition of Software Menu (left) and Launcher.

In a future post, I will go over some of the new capability created by this hack. For now, go forth and explore!

Mounting USB Drive in Single-User Mode

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I recently encountered a Mac that would not boot properly. However, it did boot into single-user mode and allowed access to the file system via the command line interface. Since I had recently purchased an external, portable USB drive, I wanted to offload my important files to the USB drive before reformatting and reinstalling a fresh system.




Here are the steps I took:

  • Connect USB drive to Mac and boot into single-user mode (cmd-s)
  • At prompt type: 
    /sbin/mount -uw /

    then hit return

  • At prompt type: 
    /sbin/fsck -fy

    then hit return

  • At prompt type: 
    ls /Volumes

    then hit return. This should provide a list of mounted volumes. It’s likely that your USB drive will not show. If this is true, then you will need to create a sharepoint in the /Volumes directory. You do this by using this command (in this case, we are creating a directory called “usb”):

    mkdir /Volumes/usb

    then hit return

  • Next we need to identify the disk number of the USB drive. This is done with this command: 
    ls /dev/disk*

    then hit return. The system will list the disks like this:

In most cases, the USB drive will be the last disk number listed (in this case: disk0s3).

  • Now, to mount this disk to your sharepoint, type the following command: 
    /sbin/mount_msdos /dev/disk0s3 /Volumes/usb

    then hit return. NOTE: In this case, we are using disk0s3 since it is the last listed. Yours will likely be different. Also note that my Western Digital USB drive uses the msdos format. Yours may not.

  • If this is mounted properly, you will be able to see the contents of your USB drive by using this command: 
    ls /Volumes/usb

    then hit return

  • If you have successfully mounted the USB drive, you may now copy files using the cpcommand. (In this example, I will copy a file named “testfile” and assume the Mac has a volume named MacHardDrive.) For example: 
    cp /Volumes/MacHardDrive/testfile /Volumes/usb/

    then hit return.

You can use this method to copy entire directories from your ailing Mac to the USB drive. In my case, I copied the entire user account directory over to the USB drive so I would keep settings, mail, music, pictures, and files in my Documents directory.