How to go into developer mode in chromebook with bad keyboard?

[mouldy]

@mouldy

Pulled out the Acer CB3-532 (broken screen) today and hooked it up to an external monitor. Booted to ChromeOS and got an update to version 103. This model can also install Android apps so that extends its life a lot since you can get an updated Android browser. Battery takes and holds a charge and everything else works. CPU = N3060 + 2gb ram so not much power.

Decided to try the mrchromebox Legacy install. As I feared, the external monitor is not active at startup which made it a real challenge, working blind a lot. Downloaded the firmware-util.sh from the web using another computer and put it on a flash drive, then got it into developer mode on the Acer. Copied the script to the Acer and ran it. Rebooted, running blind again, luckily I knew what keys to press and was able to dual boot into either ChromeOS or BW64 from USB, everything working.

The 15" screen is a good size for video viewing, to bad it's broken.

wizard

Braver than me to do this blind and counting on muscle memory. I have never done the legacy bios, no need in my life for ChromeOS. And if I really wanted it, probably still go with Flex or Fyde on UEFI bios.

I am still super puzzled figuring out which is the fuse on the Stream motherboard. On the old Stream in the video it was bright white as it was on that donor phone motherboard. But nothing white anywhere close to the screen cable socket on this Stream. And most of the little blobs seem too small. So may spoke too soon about good motherboard. It isnt if I cant get the fuse either bridged or replaced. And pick the wrong little blob to bridge and easily ruin the motherboard. Seriously bad idea soldering a fuse to the motherboard. A fuse is to protect the rest of the circuitry, not prevent reasonable repair. IMHO a fuse should be external and easily replaceable. At the very minimum should be clearly marked.

[wizard]

@mouldy

Braver than me to do this blind and counting on muscle memory.

Nope.

My Acer CB3-431 is almost the same computer, but 14". It was the first CB that I setup about 3 yrs ago and I did it with Legacy. Big advantage having it to reference. Chose Legacy for the 532 since it would probably not give me video to go into the full bios to make boot settings for USB booting.

On your Stream MB, checked on the web, looks a like a tough task unless you know exactly where it is and have the tools/skills to fix it.

Thanks
wizard

[mouldy]

@mouldy

Braver than me to do this blind and counting on muscle memory.

Nope.

My Acer CB3-431 is almost the same computer, but 14". It was the first CB that I setup about 3 yrs ago and I did it with Legacy. Big advantage having it to reference. Chose Legacy for the 532 since it would probably not give me video to go into the full bios to make boot settings for USB booting.

On your Stream MB, checked on the web, looks a like a tough task unless you know exactly where it is and have the tools/skills to fix it.

Thanks
wizard

I even found and downloaded a schematic but its more flow chart than actual useful diagram. Though maybe mean something to some electronics engineer. Honestly just need pic of the dang motherboard with fuse circled. Then just gently grind it off with dremel or usually they just sort of melt it with soldering iron, and drop tiny blob solder in its place. I watched the video of the guy on the old first generation stream. Not rocket science once you know where it is. But these fuses come in variety shapes, sizes, and colors. And this motherboard is wildly different and not as easy as just looking for the bright white blob near the socket for the screen cable. Looked at some other other motherboards with the fuse, but again fine if you have THAT particular motherboard. And these little bits on the motherboard are TINY so its not easy to test continuity with the VOM. Plus this motherboard has no fan, they use a heat spreader, basically a formed little sheet of copper held against the processor with couple screws. With it in place you cant see around the socket for the display screen to test anything. So I cant just turn on computer with bottom off and poke at things to try and check for voltage at one end of blob and nothing on the other. It is going to be in that cluster of knobby bits just behind the socket for the screen cable. I learned that much looking at various motherboards with a fuse. Always near that socket though sometimes on the bottom of motherboard rather than the top.

The CB and CF Stream motherboards seemed to have a higher failure rate so they cheaped out on something. And yea they dont fix the fuse, they officially tell you to replace the whole motherboard (well they tell you to hire a professional to do it...) which obviously isnt worth it for consumer. You just well buy a working computer. Like say lot of decisions on these low end computer made by bean counters worried about fractions of a penny, more than engineers trying to make best product. And nobody cares since they arent going to use the things themselves. They are trying to grab some money then stiff people and do everything possible to avoid honoring warranty. Or most likely reselling faulty returns as new, online retailers now seem to use "independent sub-retailers" to avoid responsibility and these guys can be pretty unscrupulous and small enough nobody going to track them down. Nobody can afford to sue for $200-$300 or whatever these sell for new. You would have to be completely crazy to give that much for one of these, add another $100 and get a i3 or Ryzen 3 and one that can be upgraded, least somewhat without workarounds. Or if you need cheap, get an older retired business computer with i5 or i7 which is going to be as fast or faster. Computers designed to last long time, well actually designed to break down less, they know corporate America will buy new as soon as old ones fully depreciated. Course they tend to be wildly more expensive when corporate America bought them new. Well corporate America and the taxpayer as they are as I say, depreciated as business expense.

[mouldy]

Ok, big illuminated magnifying glass out. There are three potentials for a fuse since its going to be next to the screen port. Anything smaller than smallest of these is highly unlikely to be a fuse. Biggest is labeled W/150, next biggest labeled P/k, and the smallest snugged up against the biggest is labelled 500-31. There is a fourth teeniest teeny tiny with a "0" on it, really guessing thats a resistor. So if anybody has any clue based on those markings???

Oh and I was able to test for continuity in the two biggest. Ohm meter probably needs new battery, doesnt beep anymore on continuity test. But does read ZERO. (When one touches two leads of ohm meter directly together should read zero resistance, the old analog ones even had little screw so you could do that and make meter read zero) So by that yea, should, I guess exclude them both. A burned out fuse would read ONE, meaning infinite resistance, since its air. But gosh that tiniest one is REALLY tiny, though the motherboard at one end of it where its soldered, has + marked.

I could probably cobble up some cardboard and aluminum foil to bridge the two largest, the heat spreader holding such poultice down. But unfortunately that tiniest one snugged right up against the big one, that would be truly difficult. Just about anything I use to test would likely bridge to something I dont want it to touch.

I did a search for 500-31 and nothing.

[wizard]

@mouldy

Ohm meter probably needs new battery, doesnt beep anymore on continuity test.

Mine still beeps (wife told me so), but my high freq. hearing is shot so I can't hear it anymore

wizard

[mouldy]

LOL, last time I had hearing checked they said my low frequency hearing is shot. So just the opposite. Thinking about hunting up couple pins, yea the kind people that sew use to temporarily hold fabric in place. Then maybe I can test that 500/31 blob. If it is infinite resistance, then think that has to be it. Least be a good educated guess. Still SO TINY, hard to believe its a fuse. Hey the 14in screen is worth $15 so I screw up the motherboard guess no great loss. But no hurry, let old brain percolate on it for a few days. And if I do get lucky maybe posting results help others. Like say this seems common problem on the CB motherboards and to certain extent on the CF. Havent looked at the CF ones since I dont own one. How different they are. There is overlap in last generation of Streams which I think HP has maybe now stopped calling Stream, but some have N3060, some have N4000, some N4020, and some N4120. The N4120 be interesting as its a four core. Passmark of around 2400. Something around equivalent of third generation 2 core i7 used in laptops i7-3520M. Sure a four core third generation i7 from desktop would run circles around it.

[mouldy]

Well that sucks, I decided to test voltage by making a little flap in the copper heat diffuser so could get meter leads in there with it on. Hey it worked for wee bit. Read 3V at both ends of the tiny suspected blob, well thats not good, obviously not the fuse then. But then started giving 0.00 at both ends. I must have shorted something. Also no more HP logo or win10 login screen with bright light shining on the screeen.

I suspect I can use the RAM and the screen on something else. The rest meh. Not worth hassle to try and sell the parts. I mean on these who really replaces anything other than screeen, keyboard, motherboard, and maybe power switch. Oh battery. But used battery kinda like fools gold. And most valuable part, the motherboard is now toast. Does have me scratching my head, thats all three suspects now eliminated. Where is that bugger fuse??? Guess I will never know as I wouldnt buy another of these. Well unless I needed a 14 inch 30pin LCD screen. Its a fair price just for the screen.

[wizard]

@mouldy

Win some, lose some. I've created my share of scrap trying to "fix" something and the "magic smoke" got out

Thanks
wizard

[mouldy]

Well got hold of the remains of a HP Stream 14-CFxxxwm Screen definitely busted in this one. Thinking sure be easy to replace busted screen with one out of the 14-CBxxx Uh, of course not. Seems HP in their wisdom went to a narrow frame screen and GLUED it on, no tabs, no screws. Obviously in the spirit of a throwaway non-repairable laptop. Oh and the replacements screens cost way more than the laptop for replacement. Not easy to remove either.

Still 30 pin low end screen with max of 1366 x 768 resolution. So removed the busted screen, duct taped the hinge arms that go up side of lid, cause without the screen glued in place, they kept popping out of their grooves. Now, hmm, remember that circa 2015 Lenovo 100s-11IBY that is about the worst designed laptop ever, least as far as repair or upgrade. Well it had a good 11.6 screen, yep 30 pin version. So borrowed that and hooked to the cable on the 14-CF. Yeppers, Houston, we have a display and good one just small. And this one despite the tabs has plenty room inside the 14-CF lid. So a laptop screen Red Green would be proud of, duct taped in place.

Now somebody had reset win11 on this (yes it came from factory with win11). This must be late version or S-version or something, cause it wasnt going to let me get to desktop without wifi connection and selling my soul to Microsoft and establishing a M$ account (yes I know there are still couple painful workarounds). Well didnt want win11 on it anyway, so disabled secure boot in bios, nuked win11, and tried different linux on it. Say maybe tie between BookwormPup64, Bodhi, and MX. MX-ahs booted live from Ventoy usb actually ran amazingly fast. Well have enough BWPupbooks so went for combo of Bodhi and MX. Maybe try something from the Kennel next.

And the downside. My gosh this 64GB eMMC is SLOW!!!!!! I swear, cheapest mechanical hard drive from couple decades ago couldnt be any slower. The only way I know the laptop is even trying to post is cause my external keyboard lights up. Then we wait, and watch the HP logo, and wait some more. Finally get GRUB and it boots sorta ok, not speedy or anything into either Bodhi or MX. Both boot much faster than Mint or Ubuntu. Those took forever. Neither run nearly as fast installed to the eMMC. And guessing this is the complaint of this Stream being SLOW in reviews, of course M$ bloat doesnt help. I was wondering why people were complaining that much on slowness since this processor got a Passmark score around 2400. Thats low end anymore, but still. Anyway now I know, its that eMMC that is the bottleneck. I had read the 64GB and 128GB eMMC drives were slower than the 16GB and 32GB, just never had one to try before.

Will open it up one of these days and use adapter + NVMe in place of wifi card and see how it does with that. There is no native M.2 socket for adding another drive. Can also use that 8GB RAM out of the 14-CB as this one only has 4GB. I noticed Puppy in RAM on this does well. It likes the faster processor. Well live boots of other linux did well too. Its that eMMC....

Anyway the thing looks pretty funky with the tiny screen and the duct tape, but unlikely anybody would see it and be hankering to steal it. LOL Bit like driving an old beater car, thieves not likely to bother it especially one with duct tape and cracked bondo, etc. That celeron N4120 is four core and sure only reason they offered it was to try and deal with full bloat win11. I imagine with faster internal drive, that windowsXlite version win11 do pretty well. De-bloated win11 isnt horrible though cant see lot reason to use windows on a low end computer except maybe for something like tax software once a year. Its never going to be a gaming machine no matter what. Oh even Ubuntu live booted from Ventoy did pretty well and I am not a big fan of Ubuntu though unless I had to run win11 for some reason, take Ubuntu over win11. Lubuntu ok, Bodhi ok, but full Ubuntu, no.

[wizard]

Get out the cardboard and make a new bezel

Thanks
wizard

[mouldy]

Get out the cardboard and make a new bezel

Thanks
wizard

Thats not actually a bad idea.... And some of those obnoxious stickers the kids put on the chromebooks and crapbooks. Hey they arent so dumb, what thief wants to walk around with laptop plastered in kid stickers? Market value drops to zero. Nobody, but nobody is going to steal the one with pink unicorns pooping rainbows... We know intel is no longer inside on that one, the magic smoke has left to escape a far worse fate. And the adhesive on those stickers is truly potent, probably better than any duct tape. Truly time consuming to remove them.

Hmm, suspect somewhere on web is a "ugliest laptop" website......

[wizard]

@mouldy

adhesive on those stickers is truly potent, probably better than any duct tape

Mineral spirits/Walmart "generic" paint thinner removes without damaging the plastic.

My daughter had a Dell E6420 laptop that the previous owner had dropped something on the aluminum top cover. Left several large shallow dents which they filled with red auto body glazing compound and sanded flat. Nice fast computer, we called it "old spot". Several of her friends/co-workers commented that she should really get a new computer. Her response was "are you tempted to steal it? Point was always made.

wizard

[mouldy]

Ok maybe the unicorn poop stickers would make it more desirable for theft? Who knew?

[wizard]

@mouldy

Have the Acer CB3-532 with the broken screen, converted to Pup and works good otherwise. Found a potential screen donor 532 on Ebay for $20. Described as "FOR PARTS AS-IS NO CHARGER UNKNOWN IF TURN ON OR WORKS VISIBLE SCRATHCES” Photos didn't show the screen as broken, but was still a "pig in a poke".

Got it today. Is all intact, plug it in to AC adapter and bingo it boots up to Chromeos. Pop the back off and remove the write protect screw, reassemble, and install RW-Legacy.. Now boots up to BW64, even has 84% good battery.

Well, that didn't turn out like I thought and now I'm still looking for a screen

wizard

[mouldy]

@mouldy

Have the Acer CB3-532 with the broken screen, converted to Pup and works good otherwise. Found a potential screen donor 532 on Ebay for $20. Described as "FOR PARTS AS-IS NO CHARGER UNKNOWN IF TURN ON OR WORKS VISIBLE SCRATHCES” Photos didn't show the screen as broken, but was still a "pig in a poke".

Got it today. Is all intact, plug it in to AC adapter and bingo it boots up to Chromeos. Pop the back off and remove the write protect screw, reassemble, and install RW-Legacy.. Now boots up to BW64, even has 84% good battery.

Well, that didn't turn out like I thought and now I'm still looking for a screen

wizard

Yea unfortunately thats kinda how it goes. Some of those old EOL chromebooks can make the best Pupbooks. Mostly cause the mrchromebox bios is better than the goofy bios that comes on the windows crapbooks.

I am kinda scratching my head, the eMMC on the Stream 14-cf (with N4120) has started working better. Its not super fast but not as slow as when I first nuked windows and installed linux. And for sure the slowness is in the eMMC, not the processor nor the linux. Its a nice enough little laptop with linux on it. Enough extra power from 4core vs 2core processor. Still wouldnt give over $50 for it in pristine condition. People that give up to $300 are nuts.

[mouldy]

On some Chromebooks, you might need to use the Recovery Mode shortcut to enter Developer Mode. For many models, this involves pressing [Esc] + [Refresh] (the circular arrow key) + [Power] simultaneously. If your keyboard isn't functioning, you may need an external USB keyboard or a method to navigate without the built-in keyboard.

And thats the problem way back with the original post about the original Samsung chromebook. The F3 [Refresh] (the circular arrow key) is dead. And no, the F3 key on a usb keyboard doesnt work for this. I looked and looked and its pretty much agreed by everybody with this problem that ONLY the original keyboard works for the [Esc} + [Refresh] + [Power]. But with these EOL chromebooks, a replacement keyboard costs more than another duplicate EOL chromebook. Its just way it is. Now suppose if you had two identical of these you could swap parts around and eventually get both converted. Though not sure its worth it. There are better EOL chromebooks than this Samsung. This one has a proprietary daughter wifi card, not the common m.2 card. meaning you cant replace the wifi card with adapter +NVMe. You would have to figure out a way to add an internal usb hub and use a usb drive to expand storage. Or be forever stuck with external usb storage.

I would say for most people either a chromebox or mini desktop is better way to go. The chromeboxes usually have a little reset button you push in with tip of pencil or a pin or something. No keyboard required or when there is, a usb keyboard is fine. And the mini x86 desktops tend to have a much more generous bios and usually an M.2 port to add a ssd. Sometimes two. Of course they dont come with a keyboard and screen like a laptop.