Installing Snow Leopard on ATV1

[Wicked1]

ok so how do you do this, and how does an ATV1 work with SL installed? also will this allow you to use the USB port on the ATV1?

(you might consider turning your ATV1 into a Leopard iTunes server and picking up an ATV2 as a replacement. If you install Leopard on your ATV1 then you can attach one of those external storage drives via USB and let it store and serve your entire iTunes library)

 

[AdrianK]

Why on earth would you want Snow Leopard on 256mb of RAM? Tiger and Leopard work fine, but I don't think people have bothered with SL. The latest iTunes works on Leopard, and if you only need a server surely iTunes 9 will suffice which runs on Tiger.

I've considered doing the same thing, if I did I would definitely go with Tiger as Leopard is unnecessary.

And yes, the USB port does work, you can use a hub too if needs be.

 

[Airforcekid]

You can do it with tiger (no sound) but snow leopard would be almost unusable even if you could get it to boot.

 

[Cave Man]

The ATV1 uses a unique audio chip such that the retail OS X versions will not support it, thus you have to use the Tiger that came with the ATV if you want audio.

 

[Bill.the.Cat]

The installation process is described in detail here: http://www.hackint0sh.org/f291/219562.htm

Snow Leopard (10.6) will not work. Leopard will work fine, 10.5.8 if you are putting it on server duty, 10.5.5 if you want internal audio to work.* USB works fine but there's only one port so if you want more things attached you will need a hub. I set mine up just borrowing a Dell keyboard with built-in hub, a mouse, and an HDMI monitor. Both of my ATV1 servers run headless, though, and require very little monitoring. If I do need a GUI I VNC into them (Apple calls it "screen sharing," command-K from Finder).

As mentioned you are very limited by RAM. This isn't a big deal if all it's doing is home server duty. You could even run it as a little kid's computer with just a web browser, but you can't really do any multitasking.

*I can confirm that audio *does* work on 10.5.5; if you want audio on 10.5.8 you can use a cheap USB audio adapter. The thread I linked above has some discussion on appropriate USB audio options.