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Haswell ChromeOS devices go EOL - Asus C720, CN60 Chromebox, LG Chromebase and many more.

I remember when the Intel Haswell based ChromeOS devices can out how impressed I was with the performance. They still hold up very well today and we have many of these devices still inactive service - Acer C720's, Asus CN60 Chromeboxes, Acer Chromeboxes and LG Chromebases to name a few. 

These devices all work fine and still offer decent performance. However, ChromeOS v76 is the last version they are getting. If you have one of these devices, take a look at the ChromeOS update part of settings and you will be told this is the last version and its time to buy a new device. I object to being told that my device(es) are obsolete and I have to buy a new one. If they work fine, why should I buy a new one and should not Google think a bit more environmentally and try to keep devices going as long as possible?

Some devices, the Samsung 303 (the Silver one), have kept getting updates well beyond their listed end of support. However, in my experience, when you get the message not more updates - that's it.

You don't have to accept this for these devices. Cloudready has a guide on how to flash a custom BIOS here. There is also a very useful guide here that also has the location of the BIOS lock screws on some devices. Once you are in developer mode, with the BIOS screw removes I did the following on an Asus CN60 Chromebox:

  • Power on and boot to ChromeOS. Do not log in, but ensure a network connection is established.
  • Hit [CTRL][ALT][F2] to open a command prompt ([CTRL][ALT][<--] for ChromeOS keyboards)
  • Login with user chronos (no password required)
  • Run the following command: cd; curl -LO https://mrchromebox.tech/firmware-util.sh && sudo bash firmware-util.sh
Follow the onscreen instructions and flash the custom BIOS. You now basically have a PC with a PC style BIOS. You can now install whatever OS you want from a bootable USB stick. 

I found I had to format the hard drive first. For this, I used a live Gallium OS USB stick and formated the internal drive. After that, I booted from a USB stick that contained Cloudready. 

To get good performance I had to enable three flags at chrome://flags 
These enable GPU acceleration, which appears to be off by default on the Asus CN60 under Cloudready. This may or may not be needed on other Haswell based devices. 

Now, these devices will go to v76 which is the current stable channel at the time of writing - so you are good for a while. But if you want the latest features and more importantly, security updates, then this procedure might give your device a few more years of life.

Just be aware that flashing a custom BIOS is a potentially risky thing and you may brick your device!

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Comments

  1. Fred17 May 2020 at 17:38

    I just installed cloudready on my Acer C720P and it works awesome! Thanks for some helpful tips. Needed about four different resource guides but I was able to do it on the first try!

    ReplyDelete

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