A future tutorial will show how to compile Bluetooth software and create an application image that contains all the software required to interface the WDTV with other Bluetooth devices.

The image is hosted at SourceForge as RAR and ZIP file for your convenience. The VMware image extracts to about 900 MB, so make sure you have enough space available before extracting.

You can use the VM with a number of VMware products, the easiest way to use the VM is VMware Player. It also supports VMware Workstation >= 5.0 and VMware Server >=1.0. If you use Virtual Box or another virtualization solution it can probably import the VMware image.

The VM has no graphical UI because you need to do all the stuff in the command line anyway. You can either use the console directly in the VMware program or you can connect to the VM via SSH (for Windows I recommend PuTTY). The VMware’s IP address is shown before you login. The username is “wdtv” and the password “!develop” (both without “”). If a password is required anywhere it is the same (e.g. root, but you should use sudo).
If you work within the VMware, so this does not apply for SSH, the default keyboard layout is currently German, which means you will find the “!” above the one (”Shift + 1″).

The WDTV Tools Subversion repository is already integrated into the VMware, so you can fetch updates to the toolchain or kernel with ease. The mipsel C compiler for the WDTV is already in the path, the toolchain is located in the wdtv. directory.

A series of future tutorials that shows basic stuff like compiling new software for the WDTV and distributing it, will be based on this VMware.