Hacking the AppleTV

Posted on March 26th, 2007 by phiber811, under main.

The AppleTV shipped this past week. Upon its arrival, many people’s first intentions were most definitely NOT to plug it in and use it, but to see what could be done to it. As luck would have it, a colleague of mine brought his into the shop, still in the factory shrink wrap, and said, “Hey J, install me a 100gb drive, and make it work?” Ha. Of course I said yes. No problems, only solutions. With that assurance, the AppleTV was left to my experimentation.

Step one was to pull the drive. We flipped the ATV over on its top, and removed the bottom rubber carefully with a flat blade scraper to separate the rubber from the adhesive pad thats under it. (Note, that rubber tears easy, dont stress it too much.) We then removed the four screws that hold the bottom and top cases together, as well as the four drive mounting screws. With those out, the bottom case and the drive came out nice and easy.

The drive is your standard Parallel ATA notebook drive. So we plugged it into a firewire sled, and then connected that to another machine. When the drive mounted, we checked the partition scheme with Disk Utility and noticed that there was an unmounted header partition (bootloader?) that couldnt easily be duplicated. So, we took the easy route. We loaded up Drive Genius and made a device clone of the drive. This copies the partitions and the data, all intact. Easy.

Next up, we pulled the ATV drive, and plugged in a 100GB drive. We formatted it as hfs+ and then had Drive Genius dump the data and partitions over to the new drive. Excellent. Only thing is that it copies the partitions exactly. so we still have a 35 odd gb drive, with the rest of the hundy, as free space. Whats the easiest next step? iPartition. It allows you to resize your partitions without reformatting. We loaded it up, chose the media partition, and made it as big as we could get it. we then commited to those settings. Sweet!

With all of this done, we then put the new ATV HD into the ATV, and powered it up to test. Yes, she booted like a charm first time. Saweet! I was more than pleased. My colleague, was mucho excited.

Of course, I can lay claim to having gotten it working on Saturday, even though I didnt post it till now. oops. Either way, we were still one of the first to make it happen!

I took pictures, but I’m a slacker and havent imported them. I’ll edit this post and add them in when I have a chance.

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shameless begging

Posted on March 12th, 2007 by phiber811, under main.

So, yeah. If anyone who reads or keeps up with MYM has a spare Joost invite, I’d be all about it. I refuse to buy one off ebay, wont participate in forum contests, or range the internet begging. One post is all I’ll make. So yes. if you have an invite and would like to share, comment on this post. thanks!

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Custom iBook for sale!

Posted on March 8th, 2007 by phiber811, under main.

I was just poking around ebay a bit, as one does sometimes. I came across an auction for a G3 iBook that was painted green. it looked awfully familiar. Then I realized that it was because I’d painted it!

My friend Jacob upgraded his wife to a MacBook, and is selling the iBook I had painted for him, back in the day. Everyone should go check out his auction, and bid on it, as it happens to be a bit of MYM history. If you win it, I’ll retouch it for you. Nuff said.

the auction is lot number: 130085829654 over at ebay.

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Modding The MacBook.

Posted on March 1st, 2007 by phiber811, under John, New Mods, main.

One of my coworkers came to me last week and said, “I want my Apple Logo to have a rainbow in it, like the old days!” He has a MacBook, and I’m willing to mod just about anything, so I said “Okay.”

I sent him off to buy inkjet/laser compatible overhead transparency film. Its perfect for this sort of thing. He came back yesterday with a $30 package of it, which is what they had at the office supply store. Eh, no worries. We’ll find a way to use it. Last night, we stayed late, and I set to work. Here’s the process.

I started by popping off the front bezel assembly with a nylon tool. Yes, it just comes right off. I then removed all the screws around the LCD assembly, keeping them in order. Once done, the LCD panel just pulls out of place and tips forward. I laid it flat on the machine, and tipped the lid assembly forward so as not to stress any of the wiring. I then used my thumb to put pressure on the apple logo, and pop it away from the lid housing. Its held in place by adhesive, so it took a little work. I then noticed that unlike the iBooks, Apple had painted the back of the apple logo white. You Bastards! Okay, no biggie. the paint they use is alcohol soluble. I’ll soak it off. Nope. Didnt work. Next step, sandpaper. I took 1000 grit, and headed to the sink. There, I began sanding in a circular pattern, under the running tap. Lo and behold, the paint began to come right off. Once I had all the paint off, I dried and buffed out the logo some. Still a bit hazy from the 1K grit. I grabbed some 2K grit and began the same process, with a light touch, checking regularly. When I had a uniform haze, I dried it off, and began polishing it with, of all things, Zildjian cymbal polish. Once buffed out, the apple logo was crystal clear. SCORE!

Next up, I pulled up photoshop CS3 (Beta!) and a picture of the old apple logo with the color bands. I measured the apple logo, put guides in the right places, and spot filled the colors necessary. A test print to regular paper confirmed it being spot on, so we printed it to the overhead film. Woo. A quick cut on the matte cutter, some tape, and assembly later, and we were done. Its not a huge ground breaking mod, but man, does it look good!

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