
Trashing Chromebooks - mafuyu
http://www.systemcall.org/blog/2014/06/trashing-chromebooks/
======
userbinator
Those swollen batteries are rather worrying - unless these laptops are being
subjected to temperatures far outside of their design spec or the charging
circuitry is (very slightly) overcharging them, they should not be swelling at
all. Although in more gentle conditions they'd probably last long enough for
the few years design life these have.

~~~
stormbrew
I've had several (three or four) MacBook batteries swell up like that from
normal/slightly heavy use after only a couple of years. This was in the
2007-2008 era or so, though, when you could actually remove and replace them.

I think it might happen more than people think.

~~~
pling
My father's 2010 MBP did this a couple of weeks ago. He opened it to stick an
SSD in it and saw that the thing had bulged inside the chassis. Might have
been like it for a year.

------
ojn
The Samsung Chromebook is a fanless machine, relying on cooling from the
ambient air around it. Having to remove the lid switch to allow the machine to
power on with the lid closed should have been a pretty strong signal of this.

Since they are far, far into voided-warranty land already, I would say just
remove the lid completely and thus get better airflow and cooling for the
board.

------
mmastrac
As a curiosity -- why not use QEMU to test ARM? Or is that risking
incompatibility with real ARM hardware?

~~~
krasin
In practice, both (qemu and hw) buildbots are useful. qemu is a bit faster and
easier to scale, hw is the ground truth.

Google Native Client buildbots are exactly like that:

qemu:
[http://build.chromium.org/p/client.nacl/builders/precise_64-...](http://build.chromium.org/p/client.nacl/builders/precise_64-newlib-
arm_qemu-pnacl-opt)

pandaboard:
[http://build.chromium.org/p/client.nacl/builders/oneiric_32-...](http://build.chromium.org/p/client.nacl/builders/oneiric_32-newlib-
arm_hw-pnacl-panda-opt)

And yes, Panda is very unstable under heavy load. :(

------
chillingeffect
Needlessly provocative title/link bait.

The Chromebooks are not trashed, they are simply re-installed with Linux and
have their batteries removed so they can rest in racks for long-term testing.

tl,dr; There aren't enough reliable ARM servers yet, so for developing Linaro
(optimized release of gcc), they use Chromebooks.

~~~
mantrax5
I like how any interesting article I've seen about Chromebooks in the last
year or two starts with removing Chrome OS from the machines.

~~~
jamesjguthrie
Agreed. I use an HP Chromebook 14 with an Ubuntu chroot as my main machine,
and I love the Chromebook, but I have no love for Chrome OS.

It's just too damn limited to be appreciable.

------
aidenn0
If you put the devboards in an enclosure with vents on opposite sides and a
small exhaust fan on one vent, you will get much better longevity, as that
keeps air moving across the hot parts. I don't know if it's a better solution
than the chromebooks though.

~~~
danielweber
A fan seems a much simpler solution.

Then again, I am playing with Odroids now and don't like to hear that they
will fail if I max them out for days on end.

~~~
snarfy
Even a small refrigerator seems simpler than hacking up a chromebook.

~~~
freehunter
In high school I tried building a PC into a refrigerator, and the results
weren't pretty. The fridge could not keep up with the heat being generated by
the CPU and over time it got too hot and shut down. The electric bill was also
quite expensive, keeping a fridge running full blast 24/7.

Maybe hacking up the fridge to have the Freon running right over top of the
CPU, but I'd rather take my chances tearing apart a Chromebook than tearing
apart a fridge.

~~~
LaikaF
[http://www.overclockers.com/extreme-water-cooling-using-
refr...](http://www.overclockers.com/extreme-water-cooling-using-
refrigeration/)

Yeah it's super old.

There's also the guy who using his pool water to water cool a few machines.

[http://www.thebuehls.com/pool_cooling/](http://www.thebuehls.com/pool_cooling/)

------
justincormack
My current ARM build machine of choice is the 2G quad core Utilite
[http://utilite-computer.com/web/utilite-models](http://utilite-
computer.com/web/utilite-models) with internal SATA SSD.

Only annoyance is stupid power connector, which really needs fixing as it
comes out too easily.

Its fast, and I run it fairly heavily although builds are not continuous, but
it is on 24x7.

------
BaryonBundle
I feel like the NVIDIA Jetson TK1 would be a better alternative to the odroid
products.

[https://developer.nvidia.com/jetson-tk1](https://developer.nvidia.com/jetson-
tk1)

~~~
pvdm
jetsons are not inexpensive.

~~~
ojn
Neither are any of the alternatives, really. The Jetson TK1 is a great little
board, and it's significantly faster than the original ARM Chromebook
(4x2.3GHz Cortex-A15 vs 2x1.7GHz). It also has a fan, so it should stay cool
under prolonged load.

~~~
lhl
The TK1 is probably worth testing out and looks at least marginally faster in
most tests, but it's worth pointing out that it seems nowhere near as much
faster as its specs might suggest, and stability running under constant load
is still an open question. Here's a couple benchmark comparisons courtesy of
Phoronix: [http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1405010-KH-
NVIDIATEG94,13...](http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1405010-KH-
NVIDIATEG94,1309037-SO-SAMSUNGCH72&compare)

(Still, if it were stable it seems like it's much preferable to having to
individually mangle Chromebooks and the TK1 comes w/ Ubuntu preinstalled on
it's eMMC. The bootloader can also be flashed to boot from SATA)

------
myrandomcomment
So what about cross compiling on x86? My company make SW for switching
hardware which is mostly PPC (P2020) and we compile everything on large x86
systems.

~~~
tantalor
I don't understand your question... the article is about automated software
build testing on ARM, not the build step itself.

~~~
notatoad
isn't it? their complaint about the beagles is that they don't have enough ram
to be compiling anything without refactoring the build system.

~~~
fhars
Being able to cross compile tells you exactly nothing about the state of your
native build environment on the target platform. I mean, just because I can
successfully cross compile C code for an attiny doesn't prove that gcc has
been successfully ported to run on an attiny.

------
miles932
Huh? Why not buy these? [http://www.amazon.com/RK3188-Quad-core-Bluetooth-
headphone-s...](http://www.amazon.com/RK3188-Quad-core-Bluetooth-headphone-
standard/dp/B00AZR1TG2/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1402465502&sr=8-8&keywords=chromebox)

~~~
voltagex_
In my experience (and the experience of other users; Google for some blogs),
the RockChip devices are pretty low quality. Often it's tricky to get Linux on
them and if you do, it won't be with a mainline kernel and hardware support
may be patchy.

~~~
rasz_pl
well, maybe Linaro could do something about this, if only author had known
somebody working for Linaro ....

------
bitL
Why not use Android sticks instead? For $60 you can get a quad-core with 2GB
RAM, USB + HDMI + WiFi + BT and passively cooled. You can place dozens of them
on a single rack. What would be Chromebook advantage here?

~~~
eigenvector
These sticks definitely do not have the cooling capacity to run at full rated
heat output 24/7\. As you note, they're passively cooled. They don't produce
any less heat than a Chromebook on the same SoC, they just throttle and
downclock faster.

~~~
bitL
I meant "passively cooled" as their advantage. You can always place some
Noctua on top of them if needed, you just don't have to. I have one of
RK3188-based sticks which is enclosed in a passive case. I also run the latest
Bay Trail NUC in passive mode 24/7 and its temperature is higher on heavy load
than of that Android stick. Performance wise BT is about 2x as fast, though it
depends on a task. 9W vs 14W at full load including OpenGL, 1W vs 4W at idle.

------
jimmcslim
Are there not ARM Chromeboxes around?

~~~
tantalor
There's the Samsung Chromebox Series 3,

[http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/pc-peripherals/chrome-
dev...](http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/pc-peripherals/chrome-
devices/chrome-devices/XE300M22-B01UK)

Edit: Nevermind, seems unavailable now. And not ARM. Derp.

~~~
jfpoole
Unfortunately the Samsung Chromebox Series 3 uses an Intel processor, not an
ARM processor.

A slightly less "friendly" alternative to an ARM-based Chromebox would be the
NVIDIA Jetson TK1. It's a developer board with an actively-cooled Tegra K1
SoC. We've been experimenting with these boards over the last two weeks and
haven't encountered any stability problems. We're not pushing them as hard as
Linaro does but we're certainly putting them through their paces.

------
blueskin_
It seems 'cheap ARM linux platform more powerful than a Raspberry Pi' is the
chromebook's primary use these days.

------
Pxtl
I'm surprised they didn't go for the various rk3188-based tv-player android
devices. There's got to be one hackable enough for Ubuntu.

~~~
mafuyu
The name of the game with ARM devices is often support and stability. There
are plenty of ARM boards out there with just barely enough driver support to
get Ubuntu running, let alone hacking it on yourself. Like the post said,
Chromebooks already come with good hardware and software support.

------
doobiaus
What about a chromebox?

[http://www.asus.com/au/ASUS_Chromebox/](http://www.asus.com/au/ASUS_Chromebox/)

~~~
timv
That isn't an ARM box.

[http://www.asus.com/au/ASUS_Chromebox/Chromebox/specificatio...](http://www.asus.com/au/ASUS_Chromebox/Chromebox/specifications/)

Intel® Core™ i7-4600U Processor or Intel® Core™ i3-4010U Processor or Intel®
Celeron 2955U Processor

~~~
doobiaus
doh. Sorry, got lost in the excitement ;)

------
mianos
Was this written in the 2000s? "The only problem is, there aren’t any ARM
rack-servers or workstations." There have been commercial rack mountable ARM
servers for years now. Even the simplest Google search shows a wide range of
ARM rack mountable servers. You can even special order them from Dell. What
are don't seem to be is great value. I am sure a few netbooks would be better
value. (ps re-installing the operating system is not what anyone except maybe
ma and pa, would call trashing one).

~~~
cbhl
Googling "Dell ARM Server" shows me a bunch of articles from 2010 about a
proof-of-concept.

What do you recommend that people order from Dell, for less than $2000? (Note
that the Chromebook in the article retails for ~$200, and IIRC the other ARM
boards mentioned are also like ~$100-$300.)

~~~
Pxtl
Maybe there's a way to hack Ubuntu onto a cloud-connect stick?

