ATV boots to black screen

Hi all, hoping I might get someone here who has seen this problem before, I am not having much luck at the Apple forums. In a nuthsell I had 2 brand new ATV that when I upgraded to 3.02 would boot with the Apple logo for about a minute then give a black screen and the front led flashes yellow. I sent the first one back and got it replaced, and yes I could have done that with the seond one but I got the shits with it and decided it wasn't going to beat me :)

I tried everything here but restore does not work, it just goes to a black screen. How to Restart, Restore and Fix a Frozen or Problematic Apple TV [tutorial]

I have read this and many like it How to update Apple TV software

So, the beast is out of warranty now and no turning back, orginal post is here for more details Apple - Support - Discussions - 3.02 update bricks ATV - once, twice, ...

If nothing else there is some useful links in the rest of this post !

Before opening I patchsticked it to get SSH running, atvusb-creator - Project Hosting on Google Code this worked fine but still same problem, black screen, however I could now SSH into it and see it was actually doing things, I don't have it here so I can't post a process list but I would love to know what a normal working ATV process list looks like ? I can post mine tonight. So, this is the point where I said OK, maybe I have a dud hard disk or file system corruption, time to pop the lid.

There is a good guide to pulling it apart here Apple TV Repair Guide Service Manual

So, I used ATVdrive AppleTV Forums • View topic - atvDrive 1.1 released to ceate three new disks, I checked them all twice, versions 2.4, 3.01 and 3.02 all of these boot the same,to a black screen after the systems starts to boot restore, I used three separate drives to do this so I have eliminated HD error. On each one after that I restored the OS to OSboot to be sure, same thing, each one boots, Apple logo for a minute, then nothing.

Firmware list is here iClarified - AppleTV - AppleTV Firmware Download Locations (Comments) only 2.4, 30.1 and 3.02 work.

I reprogrammed the HDMI controller just in case, went fine as per here. Fix HDCP on HDMI controller AppleTV Jiradett ?BLOG however according to this page trejan.com - Apple TV 3.02 should not have updated anything apart from the OS.

So, next thing out was the mainboard battery, usualy works on PC's :) Left it out 24 hours, same problem, no change. I pulled the Airport Card as well just in case, still the same problem.

Whats left to try ? Don't forget whatvere happened was as a result of the uparade to 3.02, what in the hell did it change that is not on the original hard disk ? For the record I have tried with 2 different monitors, a Samsung TV with HDMI and a TV with component. The only thing that is different is when I hook it up to component the led goes white instead of flashing yellow, but it still won't work.

Has it beaten me :)

Here is the process list of the box, anyone got any ideas as to why it won't display anything ?


-bash-2.05b$ ps ax
PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND
1 ?? S<s 0:00.07 /sbin/launchd
34 ?? Ss 0:00.00 /sbin/dynamic_pager -F /private/var/vm/swapfile
38 ?? Ss 0:00.50 kextd
45 ?? Ss 0:00.05 /usr/sbin/mDNSResponder -launchdaemon
46 ?? Ss 0:00.07 /usr/sbin/mDNSResponderHelper -t 0
47 ?? Ss 0:00.12 /usr/sbin/netinfod -s local
48 ?? Ss 0:00.09 /usr/sbin/syslogd
49 ?? Ss 0:00.71 /usr/sbin/configd
50 ?? Ss 0:00.07 /usr/sbin/coreaudiod
51 ?? Ss 0:00.08 /usr/sbin/diskarbitrationd
52 ?? Ss 0:00.00 /usr/sbin/memberd -x
53 ?? Ss 0:00.02 /usr/bin/ripstop
54 ?? Ss 0:00.10 /usr/sbin/securityd
56 ?? Ss 0:00.04 /usr/sbin/notifyd
57 ?? Ss 0:00.00 /usr/sbin/distnoted
59 ?? Ss 0:00.11 /usr/sbin/DirectoryService
64 ?? Ss 0:00.02 /usr/sbin/update 600
70 ?? Ss 0:00.20 /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindow console
75 ?? Ss 0:00.10 /System/Library/CoreServices/coreservicesd
77 ?? Us 0:03.65 /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/CoreGraphics.framework/Resources/WindowServer -daemon
80 ?? Ss 0:00.04 /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/ATS.framework/Support/ATSServer
84 ?? Ss 0:00.05 /System/Library/CoreServices/pbs
85 ?? S 0:10.87 /System/Library/CoreServices/Setup Assistant.app/Contents/MacOS/Setup Assistant -psn_0_262145
90 ?? Ss 0:00.05 /usr/sbin/lookupd
107 ?? Ss 0:00.01 /usr/libexec/crashreporterd
132 ?? Ss 0:00.00 ntpd -f /var/run/ntp.drift -p /var/run/ntpd.pid
141 ?? S 0:00.30 /usr/sbin/sshd -i
143 ?? S 0:00.11 /usr/sbin/sshd -i
144 p0 Ss 0:00.02 -bash
147 p0 R+ 0:00.00 ps ax

any help greatly appreciated.

Likely an old or broken frappliance. Often it's an old version of ATVFiles.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gbooker

Likely an old or broken frappliance. Often it's an old version of ATVFiles.

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See my first post, both units are brand new.

"I had 2 brand new ATV that when I upgraded to 3.02 would boot with the Apple logo for about a minute then give a black screen"

From what I read Finder is not running, can anyone tell me how to start that manually so I can see what happens ?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by phillou

See my first post, both units are brand new.

"I had 2 brand new ATV that when I upgraded to 3.02 would boot with the Apple logo for about a minute then give a black screen"

From what I read Finder is not running, can anyone tell me how to start that manually so I can see what happens ?

---

"open Finder" :)

If it crashed, its crashreporter.log will be in a different place. Also "dmesg" might give some more info. Finder also feeds watchdog and watchdog will reboot the box if not fed.

Did you allow the normal Apple update or did you manually update it. If you manually updated it, then you might have missed the various firmware updates that also might occur during a normal Apple update. HDMI is only one of several firmware updates that have been pushed out since 2.4.

davilla, thanks for the answer, I appreciate it, I will try to work out how to manaully apply all the other firmware updates.

Its a ATV BUG you prob have 1.2.1 you need to upgrade it

installing ATVFiles-1.3.0b1.

You can either ssh ATVFiles-1.3.0b1 to Atv or run the following command from terminal

Type:
wget http://ericiii.net/sa/appletv/ATVFiles-1.3.0b1.run

Once the .run file is on atv you can install from terminal

Type:
chmod +x ATVFiles-1.3.0b1.run

Type:
./ATVFiles-1.3.0b1.run