I'm surprised no one has gotten rid of Apple TVs EFI and replaced it with a real BIOS or given it a CSM to make it a true Intel machine that can use DOS and legacy code. He even talked about this possibility in the writeup.

But, his method is extremely ingenious. Any program which relies on INT and / or direct hardware access will fail in Windows XP running on this machine.

How hard is it to upgrade the RAM to 512 mb? Probably the 256 mb module is soldered directly onto the motherboard, sadly? So, it's probably not a direct DIMM module replacment.

As for the wifi, may one easily upgrade this to ac up from the ancient and obsolete 802.11b wifi card that 1st gen Apple TV had? Have people actually done this? If so, it makes the lean power machine actually usable on the modern internet.

Bonus frequent crashes at random intervals. I don't know what others opinion is but in my experience, even though I'm positively inclined to it, ReactOS is still far from capable to support any real usage scenario.

Of course these efforts are always welcome, I just see this more like a "run doom on an ATM" thing rather than something that is of practical use.

zyzzle wrote on 2025-04-23, 01:37:

I'm surprised no one has gotten rid of Apple TVs EFI and replaced it with a real BIOS or given it a CSM to make it a true Intel […]
Show full quote

I'm surprised no one has gotten rid of Apple TVs EFI and replaced it with a real BIOS or given it a CSM to make it a true Intel machine that can use DOS and legacy code. He even talked about this possibility in the writeup.

But, his method is extremely ingenious. Any program which relies on INT and / or direct hardware access will fail in Windows XP running on this machine.

How hard is it to upgrade the RAM to 512 mb? Probably the 256 mb module is soldered directly onto the motherboard, sadly? So, it's probably not a direct DIMM module replacment.

As for the wifi, may one easily upgrade this to ac up from the ancient and obsolete 802.11b wifi card that 1st gen Apple TV had? Have people actually done this? If so, it makes the lean power machine actually usable on the modern internet.

Agreed, I'm sure that rebuilding the BIOS using another Mac would be doable; the 2006 Mac mini shares the same chipset, so I assume something could be kludged together. 512MB RAM upgrade is not trivial as it's soldered; on top of that, you need to run some additional RAS/CAS lines I seem to recall seeing (Dosdude1 has done a video on it). You're right that some things (such as NTVDM) will not run due to how the system is booted. Wifi is a standard mini PCI-e card so any other card can be dropped in. The provided AirPort Extreme card offers 802.11n at up to 130mbps, so 2.4GHz.

konc wrote on 2025-04-23, 09:52:

Bonus frequent crashes at random intervals. I don't know what others opinion is but in my experience, even though I'm positively inclined to it, ReactOS is still far from capable to support any real usage scenario.

Of course these efforts are always welcome, I just see this more like a "run doom on an ATM" thing rather than something that is of practical use.

The device is running Windows XP happily - just the OS loader from ReactOS is used to get Windows booting. I've had no crashes on it despite heavily loading the machine. It's stable.

RichB93 wrote on 2025-04-23, 17:19:

The device is running Windows XP happily - just the OS loader from ReactOS is used to get Windows booting. I've had no crashes on it despite heavily loading the machine. It's stable.

What is total max power consumption under load in XP? Do you have a Kill-a-Watt meter handy to measure the total power draw?

RichB93 wrote on 2025-04-23, 17:19:

The device is running Windows XP happily - just the OS loader from ReactOS is used to get Windows booting. I've had no crashes on it despite heavily loading the machine. It's stable.

Ohhh ok I understood this completely wrong. I though they managed to boot ReactOS.

RichB93 wrote on 2025-04-22, 22:50:

A clever person by the name of DistroHopper39B has done some impressive hacking to Freeloader (aka FreeLdr), the OS loader for ReactOS, allowing it to boot on the first generation Apple TV.

zyzzle wrote on 2025-04-24, 00:32:

RichB93 wrote on 2025-04-23, 17:19:

The device is running Windows XP happily - just the OS loader from ReactOS is used to get Windows booting. I've had no crashes on it despite heavily loading the machine. It's stable.

What is total max power consumption under load in XP? Do you have a Kill-a-Watt meter handy to measure the total power draw?

Unfortunately I do not, but the device won't be pulling much power as it has a 5V @ 7.2A internal PSU, so 35W at maximum (Maybe 42W from the wall if you say the PSU is 80% efficient).

konc wrote on 2025-04-24, 06:25:

RichB93 wrote on 2025-04-23, 17:19:

The device is running Windows XP happily - just the OS loader from ReactOS is used to get Windows booting. I've had no crashes on it despite heavily loading the machine. It's stable.

Ohhh ok I understood this completely wrong. I though they managed to boot ReactOS.

RichB93 wrote on 2025-04-22, 22:50:

A clever person by the name of DistroHopper39B has done some impressive hacking to Freeloader (aka FreeLdr), the OS loader for ReactOS, allowing it to boot on the first generation Apple TV.

Sorry you're right, my mistake! I've amended the post.