Installing OS X to AppleTV 1gen, I don't own a Mac

[Zotaccian]

Hi, I don't have the device yet in my possession (AppleTV 1st gen) but I was wondering would it be possible to install OS X 10.5 to Apple TV when I don't own a Mac so I can't execute any command line commands which are required according to instructions?

I do have laptop-IDE to USB adapter. With MacDrive I should be able to read/write to the drive on Windows but those commands might be unavailable and Mac is needed? Or maybe if I get vmware image and direct USB to the drive in VirtualBox then I could apply commands using it?

 

[Bandaman]

No.

 

[MBAir2010]

OP
Apple TVs have their own operating system.
the only "thing" or action a computer with iTunes can perform on an TV is restore the device.
Im trying to install older programs today on my tv 3 gen. but not expecting any success.

 

[Zotaccian]

When googling the original AppleTV has removable IDE hard drive and it boots from it so original OS can be replaced, people have installed OS X 10.4, 10.5 and even 10.6 to it but 10.5 apparently has the best functionality, altough 256mb of ram isn't a good thing.

Unofficial install image of OS X was used by modifiers.

 

[ouimetnick]

OP
Apple TVs have their own operating system.
the only "thing" or action a computer with iTunes can perform on an TV is restore the device.
Im trying to install older programs today on my tv 3 gen. but not expecting any success.

The original Apple TV was essentially a stripped down Mac. It used a Intel processor and Nvidia GPU. It ran Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger locked to running Front Row. You can install a full blown version of Mac OS X Tiger on that box. It's not practical or really useful, but it's fun to play around with.

 

[Zotaccian]

I now have owned the device for couple days, so far I have tried how to restore the original AppleTV OS in case nothing else works. I tried it because for some reason automatic update couldn't update past 1.0 version so I found 3.0.2 as complete download.

Currently the device is running OSMC, a Linux-based mediacenter. I have not actually used it for anything useful, just installed it and connected online. Remote works fine with that OS. I haven't even tried playing movies from external disk but probably it can do it. Apparently OSMC does have add-ons which should enable some new functions and it could also be converted to regular desktop Linux installation with some terminal commands.

If I could enable GPU acceleration in Tiger that would probably be the most reasonable OS X option because of low RAM.