Skip to main content

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!

Labels:

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

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Delete a specific email using GAM

If a user send an inappropriate email to a loads of people or get stung by some sort of email exploit you can quickly delete the email from all of the recipients using a GAM command. Step 1 - get the email header Go into Google Vault and search for the offending user or someone known to have got the message. Click show details and grab the email ID. This will be a long string of characters followed by @mail.gmail.com Step 2 - find out who has the email Go into Google Vault and find the original message sent by the offending user. Look at the details to see who got it. Copy the list and dump it into a spreadsheet. Clean up to just a list of emails with a column header 'mail'. Save as a csv file. Step 3 - delete messages with GAM Put your CSV file in your GAM folder - this e.g. assumes its called mail.csv Run: gam csv mail.csv gam user ~mail delete messages query rfc822msgid: MESSAGEIDHERE doit The alternative nuke option is: gam all users delete messages query rf...
Post a Comment
Read more

Adding subdomains to G Suite

This is how I add subdomains (so basically new schools) to out G suite setup. I've got these steps documented on a scruffy set of notes that I've now got in Keep - so time to document them - for myself as much as anyone else! Steps in order (roughly) Add the new domain Verify the new domain Add MX records to hosting Add SPF record for Google to hosting Turn on email authentication Add DMARC record to hosting Setup custom Directory and restrict students OU to this. Create an admin quarantine for the domain. Configure SPAM setting for the domain. Turn on and off services as appropriate. Map a blank Google Site to the naked domain - if required. Setup some basic groups - allstaff, allusers (for directory) and students with appropriate permissions. Deploy custom wallpapers. So the steps in a bit of detail: Add the new domain & Verify ownership Click on Domains in the admin console: Add/remove domains followed by "add a domain" At this...
Post a Comment
Read more

My favorite GAM commands - well a few of them at least!

Where would be without GAM? Paying for expensive syncing tools or doing tedious manual tasks in the admin console. GAM can automate most things you might want to do in G Suite. So these are a few of my favourite commands - one I use either as part of a batch file - or just standalone. There are loads more - but these are ones that are used daily. Classroom Create a spreadsheet of all your domains classes -  gam print courses todrive Create a spreadsheet of a teacher's classes:  gam print courses teacher fred@mydomain.com todrive Bulk create classes: gam csv classes.csv gam create course alias ~alias name ~alias section ~subject teacher ~teacher status ACTIVE where classes.csv is a list of classes you want to make. Add teachers: gam csv teachers.csv gam course ~alias add teacher ~teacher Add students: gam csv students.csv gam course ~alias add teacher ~student Sync Students (in this example to a group - but could be an ou/csv file) gam csv grou...
Post a Comment
Read more