Well, after much hassling around and decoding now-out-of-date HOWTOs, I can pronounce pretty much complete success with what I wanted to do as far as hacking up my AppleTV in various ways. Just wanted to report the status.

I started with a stock 40Gb unit that had gotten the Apple 1.1 update, meaning some stuff didn't work right when I tried setting it up. But as of now, it...

- has a Seagate 160Gb drive in it
- has ftpd, telnetd, ssh, Apache, AFP and Vine Server (VNC) running successfully
- has NitoTV, Sapphire and a variety of other plugins and meta-plugins installed
- is still less than half-full, even with abotu half my MP3s on it, 4000 pictures, and many hours of video

Still trying to figure out how to get out of the aTV Finder and get a normal-ish Finder on there so that clicking around in VNC actually does something. None of the "quit the Finder" hacks and apps appear to work as intended, no matter how many times I run them. Didn't have that much interest in enabling USB keyboard/mouse, since I don't intend to sit at the thing.

I will probably do a writeup of my adventures and post it in the AwkwardTV wiki, as a way to help people who are starting not from a 1.0 but from a 1.1 box. I can safely say right now, though, that if you do not have an Intel Mac to use during the process, give up now. We'll wait while you go get a MacBook.

Congratulations! I have spent about 4 sleepless days trying to hack mine and have hit walls constantly!. Looking forward to your write up. My biggest frustration is that A. Patchstic then B. OS USB Drive works once then the atv refuses to boot again from either after the first go. I end up having to restore the whole USB drive to make it work. I have installed all the plug ins but still cant connect to external machines. i can however ssh. Cheers