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NTATV - Windows NT on the Original Apple TV

NTATV Logo

The NTATV Project: Bringing Windows NT (Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003, ReactOS) to the original Apple TV.

Want to run Windows on the Apple TV? Read the Guide!
Want to learn how I did this? Read the Write-Up!

Contents:

Status
Things that will Likely Never Work
Get Involved
Known Issues
Changelog
Acknowledgements

Status

Do note that I have not done extensive testing on anything except XP. Hardware that works on XP is likely to work on Windows 2000/2003, but is not guaranteed to.

Operating System	Kernel	PCI	USB	Basic Video	Accelerated Video (HDMI)	Accelerated Video (Component)	Ethernet	WiFi	RCA audio	Optical audio	HDMI audio	Remote	Software Reboot
Windows pre-2000 (NT3/4, 9x, DOS-based, etc)	Will likely never work; too reliant on legacy BIOS, PIC interrupts, and non-ACPI device enumeration
Windows 2000	Working	Working	Working	Working	Working¹	Untested	Working	Untested	Untested	Untested	Untested	Broken	Broken
Windows XP	Working	Working	Working	Working	Working²	Broken	Working	Working	Partially Working³	Working	Broken	Broken	Working
Windows 2003	Working	Working	Working	Working	Untested	Untested	Working	Untested	Untested	Untested	Untested	Broken	Untested
Windows Vista	Partially Working	Unknown⁴	Unknown⁴	Broken	Unknown⁴	Unknown⁴	Unknown⁴	Unknown⁴	Unknown⁴	Unknown⁴	Unknown⁴	Broken	Unknown⁴
Windows 7	Does not work; no compatible bootloader or EFI-compliant video driver at this time
Windows 8, 8.1	Working⁶	Working	Working	Working	Working⁷	Untested	Working	Working	Partially Working³	Untested	Broken	Broken	Working
Windows 10	Working⁶	Working	Working	Working	Working⁷	Untested	Working	Working	Partially Working³	Untested	Broken	Broken	Working
Windows 11, any future versions of Windows	Will never work; no 32-bit CPU support
ReactOS	Working	Broken	Broken⁵	Working	Broken⁵	Broken⁵	Broken⁵	Broken⁵	Broken⁵	Broken⁵	Broken⁵	Broken	Broken⁵

Must use the 86.38 drivers (direct download link) and install via Device Manager
Must use the 179.48 beta drivers or earlier and install via Device Manager
Audio plays, but at an extremely low volume.
When booting Vista is attempted, the hard drive will spin up as if the system is booting but USB devices never come online and the system never connects to the network. It is possible that Vista would boot correctly if a working basic video driver is used, but nothing worked for me. A similar issue appears on later Longhorn builds.
Non-working PCI breaks nearly everything on ReactOS.
Will only work on Apple TVs upgraded to 512MB RAM, which requires surface mount soldering skills and equipment as well as a firmware flasher. Windows 8 and later also use a completely different installation process involving a modified U-Boot that I haven't documented because there are only a few dozen 512MB Apple TVs.
Must use the 179.67 WDDM drivers (direct download link) and install via Device Manager. In modern Windows 10, this driver is very unstable due to issues with old WDDM drivers; turn off transparency for the best experience.

Things that will Likely Never Work

HDMI audio

The Apple TV uses an extremely weird configuration for HDMI audio in that the Intel chipset, not the NVIDIA video card, is responsible for the audio over the HDMI port. The Intel HDMI audio drivers from the GMA 950 drivers will install, but no devices show up. In order to get this working, I'd need to either completely rewrite or binary patch the Intel HDMI audio drivers to support the Apple TV, which would likely be extremely complicated. If someone wants to work on this, let me know.

NTVDM

NTVDM on Windows XP requires some legacy BIOS functions (likely the Extended BIOS data area and legacy VGA functions from the GPU) and therefore will not work. Just use DOSBox or WineVDM (make sure to download the version for older Windows versions) to run DOS/early Windows applications. I haven't tested it on Windows 8/10 but it probably works fine since those OSes have official UEFI support.

Versions of Windows prior to 2000

NT versions prior to 2000 would require a custom HAL to make use of ACPI and the APIC timer, another custom video driver, and probably some other modifications too. Windows 9x will not work due to its reliance on BIOS functions.

Get Involved

Contributions are welcome! I am particularly interested in having a more functional driver for the front LED and remote (I wrote a proof-of-concept driver awhile back, but it never really worked as well as I hoped). If anyone with experience writing Windows drivers is interested in working on one, please let me know!

If you experience any issues with NTATV, please let me know through the NTATV issue tracker. Please refrain from reporting known issues like the ones below.

My custom version of FreeLoader from ReactOS is located in this repository. To compile it:

Install RosBE (do not use the Ubuntu PPA)
Run RosBE (on Linux it's located in /usr/local/RosBE/RosBE.sh)
Clone my repository: git clone https://github.com/DistroHopper39B/reactos -b AppleTV-Desktop
cd to my repository
Run ./configure.sh (Linux) or configure.cmd (Windows) -DSARCH=appletv && cd output-MinGW-i386
Run ninja freeldr

freeldr.sys will be located in output-MinGW-i386/boot/freeldr/freeldr.

Known Issues

With the NVIDIA driver installed, if the display goes into standby, unplugging and re-plugging the HDMI cable is required to get a picture. To avoid this issue, set "Turn off monitor" to "Never" in the Power Options Control Panel.
Component video doesn't work correctly with the NVIDIA driver. I don't have a component-enabled monitor to test with, but apparently, only the blue component channel is displayed in some cases, and attempting to use both HDMI and component video at the same time breaks the system. You could try it, but it's unlikely to work properly.
The FreeLoader (ReactOS bootloader we're using to boot XP) NTFS driver is very buggy, only properly supporting NTFS partitions formatted in English copies of Windows XP SP3 or Windows 2003. If you are using any other version (such as Windows 2000), or get errors like Could not load SYSTEM.ALT hive!, try installing Windows on a FAT32 partition.
FreeLoader's IDE driver is somewhat buggy, especially on SATA adapters. If you experience freezes during the boot process it is likely because your hard drive is incompatible with FreeLoader as of now.
RDP connections fail, reason why is unknown buy may have to do with the NVIDIA driver.

Changelog

v0.3

Windows 2000, XP, and 2003 now use the same bootloader and video driver, removing the need to download a seperate ISO
Updated FreeLoader codebase again, fixing the line of corrupted characters on the boot screen
Reverted memory mapping code due to compatibility issues
Removed IDE ISA compatibility mode hack, the IDE controller is now running in PCI mode at all times
Minimal GUI is now the default appearance of FreeLoader, resulting in a more NTLDR-looking boot process
Executable name is now freeldr.sys instead of mach_kernel for consistency with other FreeLoader ports
New prebuilt image adds more up-to-date NVIDIA driver

v0.2.1.1

Added Windows 2000 support! There are some caveats:

Likely limited driver support
Reboot doesn't work (no ACPI 2.0 support in Windows 2000)
More complicated installation process

win2000

No changes to the Windows XP/2003 ISO or installation process.

v0.2.1

Reboot now works! Shutdown still hangs, but the same issue happens on Linux and Mac OS X since the Apple TV has no ACPI shutdown at all.
Memory mapping code rewritten and simplified

v0.2

NTATV's FreeLoader is now up-to-date with ReactOS' FreeLoader (version 3.2)!
IDE driver issues are resolved (theoretically) and the Apple TV should now boot from any IDE drive, including IDE to SATA adapters and SSDs, without issue.
New prebuilt image adds NVIDIA driver support out of the box

v0.1.1

Fix to early video driver preventing corrupted boot logo at certain resolutions

v0.1

Initial release

Acknowledgements

NTATV_UTILS/HDDFix.reg: Microsoft KB314082
NTATV_UTILS/Boot/boot.efi: Apple TV stock bootloader, from Apple TV stock OS
NTATV_UTILS/Boot/freeldr.sys: FreeLoader from ReactOS; Apple TV modifications by me, UEFI modifications by Justin Miller (The_DarkFire_) and Hermès Bélusca-Maïto
NTATV_UTILS/Boot/System/Library/Extensions/Dummy.kext: DummyKext by me
NTATV_UTILS/Video/bootvid.dll: Bootvid from ReactOS; UEFI modifications by Justin Miller (The_DarkFire_) and Hermès Bélusca-Maïto; slightly modified by me
NTATV_UTILS/Video/genfbvmp.sys: Generic framebuffer driver for ReactOS (not in upstream yet); written by Justin Miller (The_DarkFire_) and Hermès Bélusca-Maïto; Windows modifications by me
Edgar (gimli) Hucek, James McKenzie of MythicBeasts, Scott Davilla, and Dmitri (loop333) for Apple TV Linux bringup