Google’s ChromeOS and associated hardware get a lot of praise for being easy to manage and for providing affordable hardware for school and other educational settings. It’s also undeniable that their locked-down nature forms a major obstacle and provides limited reusability.
That is unless you don’t mind doing a bit of hacking. The Intel Core i3-8130U based Acer CXI3 Chromebox that the [Hardware Haven] YouTube channel got their mittens on is a perfect example.
This is a nice mini PC, with modular SODIMM RAM, an NVMe storage M.2 slot as well as a slot for the WiFi card (or SATA adapter). After resetting the Chromebox to its default configuration and wiping the previous user, it ran at just a few watts idle at the desktop. As this is just a standard x86_64 PC, the only thing holding it back from booting non-ChromeOS software is the BIOS, which is where [MrChromebox]‘s exceedingly useful replacement BIOSes for supported systems come into play, with easy to follow instructions.
Reflashing the Acer CXI3 unit was as easy as removing the write-protect screw from the mainboard, running the Firmware Utility Script from a VT2 terminal (Ctrl+Alt+F2 on boot and chronos as login) and flashing either the RW_LEGACY or UEFI ROM depending on what is supported and desired. This particular Chromebox got the full UEFI treatment, and after upgrading the NVMe SSD, Debian-based Proxmox installed without a hitch. Interestingly, idle power dropped from 2.6 watts under ChromeOS to 1.6 watts under Proxmox.
If you have a Chromebox that’s supported by [MrChromebox], it’s worth taking a poke at, with some solutions allowing you to even dualboot ChromeOS and another OS if that’s your thing.
Great, now I want it too! (I have no use for it, I already have a ryzen 5 3550H server running 24/7)
A write protect screw? That’s hilarious 😂
It’s like the “No Smoking” screws. Once you remove the screws and throw away the sign, then you can smoke.
Like the physical tab allowing recording in audio cassettes long time ago
And video cassettes, but they were at least analogue, mechanical devices and it’s difficult to beat a mechanically actuated switch for simplicity
It is actually rather common on Chromebooks/Chromeboxes I believe. My Toshiba Chromebook had a physical screw as well for a write-protect before I flashed it. Now it’s running Debian pretty well.
I had a Core i7 one with a bad BIOS chip, had to desolder one from another dead motherboard. Thanks to MrChromebox I had something I could write to the ‘new’ chip. Unfortunately it was a 16MB chip, not 8, so I simply doubled the BIOS and wrote it twice 😂. I think the machine serial may have been all 00000 after that, I can’t remember if it was able to be extracted from the partial dump of the bad chip.
So the protect screw is sometimes not the way it gets flashed. But yeah, they just have the copper under the screw split, half ground plane as usual, and half leading off to the write protect pin. Pretty elegant if you ask me, Chromebooks claim is security, and you can’t have that with a software re-writeable BIOS.
The more I think about it, the more it actually makes sense as a convenient way of doing it, particularly during manufacturing.
The screw touches the flash’s nWE pin (or something in this style). So the parameters for the system (stored on the flash) are write protected by hardware, there’s no software that can nuke the system, which is, honestly, both smart and secure against an appliance that’s connected 24/7. When you unscrew the “protection”, you can remove the write protection with some code and enable the alternative firmware bit. In that case, the system will accept to boot from an unsigned/unsecure bootloader (UEFI or legacy BIOS), stored on your harddrive.
If i recall correctly you can set it in software to ignore the state of the screw using a suzyQ-cable on a USB-C type Chromebook and via one of the 3 Uarts on the debug header of the older models.
I like the idea, particularly re-purposing the mounting screw. But how many (tenths of a) cent do I save by using a screw instead of headers/jumpers or a switch? Is it more reliable, or is it more vulnerable to mis-use? Maybe this could save vertical space for portable designs.
It’s not about the cost of the part, but the cost of the extra assembly step. Placing the single jumper of flipping the switch would either require a human worker, or an expensive jig and robot, which makes it cost more per unit than the part would.
These sort of “Chromeboxes” are actually pretty low volume products. Companies like Acer run the model for 1-2 years and then switch it out for something else. This is because they don’t want any particular product of theirs to “accumulate” on the market – for various reasions (see “confusopoly” for one).
Does Acer still crank out dollar store quality hardware?
I haven’t messed with one of their PCs in over ten years. I made a little side money in school doing entry level IT work and I think I made more money backing up and wiping Acer products than I did anything else. Walk down the “tech” aisle at any thrift store and if they accept computers there will be a few Acer’s sitting there.
That said, if you can make one of these boxes into a reliable IT component for that little money and effort, then go for it. I occasionally get lucky with a Harbor Freight tool and they last me for years.
They make a range, some of it is rebranded Thinkcenter grade Lenovo.
I have flipped quite a few PCs using their $9-20 motherboards and a Xeon processor. It’s the non-standard power plug, but that is easily fixed, I either make a custom cable if it’s a modular supply, or pick up a $2 adapter to 24-pin.
I have found their cases to be of decent quality and sturdy. But then again I ventilate them using a hole saw on the ABS, an angle grinder with a cut off wheel on the frame, and some painted expanded metal bonded behind the hole, looks almost factory, at least not bad.
Thank you, this is great! For a long time I used a hacked chromebook as a daily driver, using Coreboot installed using mrchromebox’s scripts :)
Let’s reuse more hardware
Here’s the list of supported devices, for people looking to try it.
Here’s a page summarizing the BIOS support, and OS support:
https://docs.chrultrabook.com/docs/firmware/supported-devices.html
Same! My last three daily-driver laptops have all been de-Googled Chromebooks, with the latest being a quite capable Thinkpad C13 Yoga with the Ryzen 5 3500C/8GB of RAM that only cost me $150USD.
This looks like it would be a much more robust, and potentially cheap, option for running Octoprint. Time to start poking the marketplaces.
kinda surprised these weren’t cheaper, oh well that’s another task for Father Time to take care of
Point of order, the chrome boxes I had used M.2 SATA drives.
I’m not sure if this Chromebox supports NVMe, in the thumbnail for the video it looks like 2 notches to me, which is usually SATA, but sometimes 2 lanes NVMe (I’ve only dealt with Optane drives using x2 PCIe, and they come in 2280, not 2242 form factor.
You can also convert a ARM chromebook with postmarketOS (ARM processor aren’t supported by MrChromebox. Recently did it, it’s a PITA to do, but it works and it works well. To be honest, since ChromeOS is running linux, you are, paradoxically, more likely to have a perfectly working laptop from a Chromebook than a Windows only laptop converted to Linux.