For anyone intrested in AppleTV I just wanted to say that after passing serveral nasty tricks and some prayers, I was able to extract the kernel form the AppleTV. The baby is 12 MB in size (8 MB more than the usale OSX kernel!) and has a very stunning initirior. From the uname it looks like a 10.4.8 source was used. The kernel identifies as:

Darwin Kernel Version 8.8.2: Mon Jan 29 18:57:29 PST 2007; root:xnu-792.94.18~1/RELEASE_I386

So far I can say it looks like the AppleTV uses EFI as well, it really is a living room mac. That's it so far for today, stay tunned for more infos. If you are intrested in the kernel of AppleTV and what is going on feel free to join us on IRC in the usale place at irc.osx86.hu .

AppleTV, say hello to your new daddy now :-)

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Cool, nice1! Let's see what the 8MB+ is good for...

Because of many recent questions on AppleTV beeing sse2:

The kernel itself has nothing to do with SSE2/3. The reason a emulation is needed for OSX is because a lot of OSX frameworks use SSE3, not teh kernel. A SSE3 kernel can boot happily on a SSE2 machien to i.e. single user mode The kernel of AppleTV itself has no emualtor or such thing.

But something other intresting, beside the fact AppleTV boots with EFI... it also uses HPET :-)

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Just a little update, I submited a guide to extract the kernel and the rest of the system which is hidden by AppleTV to AppleTVhacks.com. I hope it will be up there shortly

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A new goddie:
For everyone who got SSH already installed, you migth want to check perl out which seems to be installed on the AppleTV. With the power of the camel a lot of nice things should be possible. Version told me it's v5.8.6. Perl enables the user to program and run partly complexe stuff on the AppleTV directly, makes the whole thing even more intresting, doesn't it?

Also somethign to clarify:
The OS is not absed upon 10.4.7 as stated in multiple palces. The kernel is a 10.4.8 version as you can see in the version string I posted above. This means it's a 10.4.8 mini-OSX.
UPDATE: Not only the kernel is, also a lot of accoring files on the system prooven to be 10.4.8 identical. So we can say the previous foudn version string labeling it 10.4.7 does not refer to the OS equivalent to OSX or is simply ... wrong and forgotten to edit by Apple.

I hope the submited article will be up shortly, requests on kernel extractiosn are killing me x-)

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A FYI if you haven't noticed already:

kernel prelink files can be created by the kextcache process:
Doesn't help for extracting (you already figured it out), but could be very useful for creating a new mach_kernel.prelink

A short status update on the AppleTV progress:

I managed to patch the new "Finder" to work with it's frameworks and files on a retail OSX of a retail mac. The only problem is currently that I am testing on a macbook which shows no picture. It is possible the output gets somehow send to the DVI out but .. my mini DVI is broken :-o

Well we went into testing on other machines now, stay tunned. Thanks goes to bikedude880 for his great support with this :-)

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How did you manage to run it on normal OSX? I placed frameworks were they should be, and after running nothing happens... the file remains used and I can't delete it, and I'm sure it's not open (ps -A | grep "Finder" shows only my Finder, and grep)
Can you tell how you patched it, or maybe upload (or e-mail) the patched "Finder" ?
I can test it on my MBP

Details will be given later. So far we can confirm the AppleTVOs runs on a macpro :-)

But now we need to enter something into it, the itunes passkey, quite difficult without a remote

UPDATE: also bikedude got my patch running with his system... only macbook refuses :-(

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We can also confirm that it is almost running on a HackPro

Only problem is it's still looping, which the video does not show. Still looking to get a workaround for that blasted remote...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FAGymW34KY