Raspberry Pis are for PAYPIGS, Buy a $9 Chromebook Instead (UEFI Flashing and Linux install guide) 

I dont know chromebooks, but generally, acer and similar laptops are consumer junk that falls appart after a year of daily use. good for a screenless use, but if you need a laptop, get a used enterprise one.

That cursor was wearing me out. I had to stop watching. But the video did provide good info on how to repurpose a Chromebook.

That cursor really makes you think. Insane, creative, weird, usable and unusable, all at the same time. At least he won't lose the cursor anymore.

@@comicaldaysyea it is lovely

it's pointing right at my soul

fr, times really have changed

That’s great and all but how am I supposed to get east access to GPIO pins otherwise?

also remember how when chromebooks just louched, they where cheap(often under €100 even for the good ones, the cheap ones got closer to €50)), but once they got popular and schools started using them they suddenly cost around €300 to €400 with perhaps when lucky sometimes one closer to €200 in some kind of rare sale. also remember indeed sbc's being super cheap eventually at some point, the pi's still where more expensive. but I remember buying a pine A64+ 2gb for €35 and that was actually through a local store instead of buying it directly which would have been cheaper, but import regulations are insane in netherlands, and I had gotten a gift card for that speciffic store. back then the pine A64+ 2g was basically the highest end normal hobbyist SBC on the market, it's closest competitor being the raspberry pi 3b which while having quite close cpu performance, and more off the shelf support, only had up to 1gb ram. the prices now are much higher, and often there are no cheap models, or they stll use old technology but the price won't follow(ofcource also is industry probably trying to push them down) but the main issue is that in many cases there isn't really much improvement in many sbc's in their raw specs or power usage, yes they have more ram, storage compatibility also increased by a lot, largely they are now optimized for normal computer use just like a chromebook. but as a hobbyist or tinkerer you might want to use it as a server, compute center, robot, etc. so much of the old sbc audience looks for a sbc which has a low power usage/high efficiency. and high compute power(cpu, but also in some cases gpu or special accelerators). gpio is normal to not be altered to much however since that works well and there is a lot of it, the main issue with the gpio would be either the speed it handles, or the accuracy and such which often are related to compute power as well in some ways. by now people would have expected to for long be at a smaller nm node size for better efficiency. the pi 5 finally decided to do that through a altered more flashy version of the main method I proposed to them as how to do it after I got very dissapointed to see the pi 4 still running on 40 nm(which back then actually had a insane shortage, if they would have followed the advice for adding a seperate chip for gpio(they also added many new types of IO on it(as I said a more fancy version)) then they would actually have been able to produce many more pi's and for cheaper, since some smaller node sizes actually where a lot more available and a lot cheaper at that moment due to 40 nm just being a insanely popular nodesize since everyone decided to use that since raspberry pi used it), I actually send them a big document with multiple solutions and many relatively simple ones, what they now did with the pi 5 also was in it and the optimal one to do as it was modular and easy to scale in the future, as well as reasons they should do it and ways they could safely bring it into the market in the pi 4, but now with the pi 5 I think the went to something like 16nm or such, all the extra faster storage and such and extra thigns still keeps the power usage up and ofcource the board being faster. but next to that by now I am quite positive there must be many hobbyists who would have loved for some SBC's with more than 4, 6, or 8 cores to have launched, while 8 could be doable, right now they are only on high end boards, while ARM is actually made to be very easy and cheap to increase in core count, in many SBC's the actual SOC on the board is insanely cheap, often being around €2 to €5 for many of the ones where I looked for the price, what makes the boards expensive are all the other extra things. but for example making a sbc to act like a cluter computer by default would give a many core powerfull super cheap sbc. ofcource just uing a many core sbc or a chip where you can just scale the cores(some support that by default actually) then it could actually act like one computer, doesn't need to be super fast single core, actually needs to be less fast than many others, but for multicore it would be a monster. that is pretty much possible but noone does it. I also remember having designed a custom technology for better linking such seperate cores and chips, which was simpler, cheaper and generally better than most normal methods and not propetairily owned, but I don't remember exactly how it worked, I know I did once work on one which used a shared ram module with each chip having assigned only a part of it and so only being able to write in their own part but to read in all, but I don't really think/am not sure if that one was related to this other method, perhaps I have also had that in that same document, or somewhere else, so perhaps I might find it back, the ram method is simple however, but the other better method would be usefull as well, and ofcource I could just reinvent it again if I even get to face the same problems/info again like back then since this was years ago.(I should write inventions down) while I don't remember my better core linking method, I do remember the ram based one I proposed long ago, where modules either have their own ram and a part of a ram module which all can read directly but only write in their own part, or where all have only shared ram but just only are allocated speciffic sections of it to write, but read acces to all. this ram based one was meant to improve cluster computing, especially for boards with many computers or soc's on a single board where this would be easy. normal communication methods may and can still be used next to it, but this ram based option allows for the cores to work way more independant and not have to wait for data or for posting data, instead they can just read the data from ram at high speed, and write to it, other communication could be used to just attend cores of something if they don't do that automatically, the main acceleration is that cores can then actually work on the same process and can do many more instructions but you won't have to wait or be afraid of data corrupting or going wrong or such. it would work well for things like AI, video rendering, blender, compute use etc. might add server use, but it wasn't designed for that, would work well for it but for server use you would need to test the security perhaps since essentially it would still be a cluster computer but then just with highly enhanced communication and connection with eachother acting almost like a single cpu.

@@droidy347 USB GPIO breakout board, such as from Adafruit.

​@droidy347 arduino you can get for 5 usd a piece

stealing ftw

@@steve-rambo Oh shit. Im not sorry 😅

Just don’t get stuck with the HP model, I have a non modifable model. There’s only like one or two but just avoid HP😅

Imagine getting mugged for your crapbook 💀💀

@@Valrax which one? I have a 11 g8 which Im pretty sure you can mod

Well fact of the matter is, atleast on intel platform, modern computers still have GPIOs as part of the LPC bus. Though due to the fact that no one really uses them this way and that there is very little open documentation on that in the wild i doubt a lot of people would want to bet on that. Also if they are not already in use you are not all that likely to get a trace with it somewhere, so... yeah

you can probably get gpio over usb.

@@SwordfighterRed You can, but usb is kinda hard to make work with tight timings due to how bloated it is(one of the reasons why usb support was never really adopted into linuxcnc hal, even though rt-usb kinda exists), but you absolutely can write some "thin" firmware for the cheap microcontrollers with usb support to actually do the "quick" stuff without involving the usb bus, and then make computer do the heavy lifting

​@Shonicheck you can run circuit python which is designed to run over USB and get something cheap to go along with your chromebook like a esp8266/esp32 or something like that

@@dot_dot_pwn2650 latency

Thanks, man!! Your dad sounds like a cool dude. Fr, if it weren't for locked down hardware, we'd have even more upcycled tech than we do already. These things are totally PiHole or Retroarch ready

NOt a pi head but do have engineering degrees and experience in IT for decades. Apples and orangess. Ive used many SBCs and microcontrollers and more than a few desktops and servers. There is no use case where a Chromebook would replace a pi.

​@@jhoughjr1this is meant for people using pis at home, where a not insignificant amount of them are just being used as a simple homelab (I'm guilty of it too).

The “top i7” is a different socket than your old ass mobo. So I doubt that

@@airknight8307 I said I upgraded it to the top i7 for its time... You should always learn the content before you critique soneone mate, better luck next time.

@@airknight8307 foot in mouth lol

@@tims001 you mind breaking down more "specs" on your build... i have some old cases and pcs i got from an office that id like to just fill up and make a linux/windows/mac machine just for fun and shit. what mobo/chipset is it? any you reccommend looking for that stay in that pennies on the dollar area?

@HIGH_noon hi there, yes I'm using Linux also, after trying many distros i now use Ubuntu studio as I mainly use it for recording audio with Ardour. It's an asrock fatality board with I think an H87 chipset and an i7 4770. Like I said the board I bought new at the time, the i7 I bought on ebay for about 40 Australian dollars used. The 32 gigs of ddr3 ram was about 70 Australian dollars for the kit. I also upgraded from a 1tb HDD to a 1TB SSD. My tip with buying used CPUs is that I do not buy overclockable CPUs as they could have been used and abused.

That and his fuckin cursed cursor 🤣

@@mro4ts457 the cursor is a masterpiece

Dude, that's probably the better way. Thanks for sharing!

Some of the SBCs that are out these days are super powerful, definitely enough for normal computing tasks for most people IMHO...stuff like the LattePanda x86 SBC models.

​@@dieselbaby the LattePanda's are great.. however, for ~$700 (for the Sigma w/ 32gb RAM & 500gb SSD), I can get a lot more capability in a used enterprise mini PC Its not so much whether or not they can do it, because they certainly can! Its that you are paying a premium for a form factor and feature set that isnt needed for most. Sometimes it can take a bit of patience when getting one of the used enterprise PCs though, since they are inherently a generation or two behind. But, even brand new Mini PCs will generally get you more for your money, albeit in a slightly larger size, than something like the Sigma SBCs are AMAZING, and I use them extensively for specific tasks. Its more that if you dont actually *need* the form factor or features specific to most SBCs, you are almost always better off going with something else for the money. Beyond that, used enterprise mini PCs are heavily under rated, even if people are starting to catch on in the last couple years lol

Its a US thing because other countries have responsible electronic disposal laws. I've worked with these, coming from Schools, they are totally wrecked when sold on. Schools bleed hardware until its totally trashed, usually they've been cobbled together to keep them working, you'll often find 1 unit is in effect 3 units cobbled together and when they finally break they're responsibly recycled, but in US they are gathered by individuals who will "refurbish" them, but really just flog off lots. At best you'll get a couple of working units out of all these devices, so long as you paid nothing its worth it, but $100 is a bad deal when you can buy a cheap NEW netbook for not much more now.

@@handheldgaming4life the kids don't seem to be learning responsible ownership either. When I was at school I was one of only two kids who had a pocket computer, cherished that thing; I still have it actually. The condition I see some systems in these days makes me think they are deliberately breaking them, tech companies must love it

@@davocc2405 yep! You broke a computer when I was a Kid, your parents were summoned to School and they were embarrassed by the Headteacher and then you got "punished" when you got home. 🤣. That said computers cost a fortune when I was a kid and to break one was a herculean effort. Pretty sure the only kid to break a PC in my day at school went on to a successful life of crime with the prison sentences to back it up. 🤣

This thing about making mods from old technology and reusing old PC parts is something unique to the US or UK, the rest of the world has to deal with shipping costs, customs charges, extra import charges, and other abusive tax costs. There is no point in doing this if you don't live in these countries.

@@CiscoRo when I lived in Australia it was thriving there due to the huge size of government as a segment of the economy. Costs were high due to spending power constraints and corporate fleet buys of PCs saw massive discounts (I used to be an IT buyer for an organisation and saw the disparity from retail). There they have a used kit retail channel (you need a state issued 2nd hand dealer license), we used to go to weekly markets of used parts and gear held at local halls, schools, etc. The retail markups on the used systems were huge, flipping a used desktop APAC used to net a 200% profit margin over purchase price; most systems were by nature fairly conservative so few things to go wrong and most buyers were pretty light users, warranties varied but tended to only be 30 days for many vendors if I remember correctly. Not sure about Canada but I believe NZ does it... it seems to have more to do with the retail disparity rate too, in Oz they pay about double what an American does for most things (perhaps 2-4x for a house when you average the nation out).

As a dude writing this from a T450S, I'd say Thinkpads are great but serve a different use case. I just buy Chromebooks in bulk, rip off the screen, hook them up to a tv, do all then stuff and then hand them off to friends and family, usually as living room devices. Chromebooks seem to be pretty indescribable so far and are usually draw less power (not that that power part matters too much).

​@@steve-rambodamn, what did those Chromebooks do to you!?!?

exactly these kids are braindead, I got a t470 for 60 and it’s 100 times the machine of a chrome book or pi.. came with windows 11 pro, 8gb ram, even an ssd… the fak I’m going to do with 20 broken inferior machines? Nothing useful here but yea if I’m starting a school in India I’ll consider it

also its good protocol to charge the battery up to about 60% before removing for storage.

@@monoclinous4934 That battery tip is good to know! Also love that more and more people are getting excited about upcycling ewaste

I remember when Acer made those tiny netbooks running the worst version of Linux I've ever seen. I took a bunch, installed XP on them, and they became useful machines.

A chromebook with replaceable RAM? That's a nice concept.

Just run alpine like everyone else.

@@InvidiousIgnoramus My bad, I have an old lenovo thinkpad which is similar to the chromebooks and I didn't know the chromebooks had their RAM soldered in place. The thinkpads are a good choice like the chromebooks in that they're pretty cheap and you can potentially find used versions sold in bulk, plus if you can upgrade the RAM it's nice for running more intense operations.

@@Qwerty-jy9mj Honestly I did not find anything about Alpine when searching for a lightweight linux distro, I had considered puppy linux and antiX but for whatever reason chose Bodhi. Thanks for the recommendation tho, I'll try installing it in virtualbox to play with.

Well, yeah, for stuff that you need a smaller form factor or a lower footprint, Pis still makes sense. And these also don't replace controllers like Arduinos or ESP32s either. This is more of a "I need a computer for another room" type thing. I actually started on this whole Chromebook thing because Pi Zeros and Zero Ws went from $5 or $10 to something much more expensive, like over $30. Not sure if the Pi resale and supply market is still as crazy expensive as it was back a year ago.

I agree. This is just good for computer science. Robotics or anything hands on projects won’t be a good fit.

@@steve-rambo I remember when you could buy a Pi online for $6 (that's with shipping), now it's wildly overpriced.

@@Axodus I never once saw a price that low. The cheapest I could ever find a Pi Zero for was $12.99 and that didn't include shipping. I only ever got one because my brother wanted me to do a project on one for him and he had bought a few and let me keep the one I was working on. I always wanted a Pi 3, but I wasn't willing to pay the prices they wanted for one knowing that I'd need to spend a bunch more just for the accessory pieces.

@@thedude5295 I got it used online for $6, I got three of them. It was the original model. It didn't come with any of the accessories.

Not to mention the chrome book isn't open source, and has no giant ecosystem of users and knowledge.

lol, I imagine it'd be a lot like the printer scene in Office space. Props to you for repurposing yours. Really cool of your school to actually let you keep it.

Bought a stack of these specific models and they're hella fun to modify and they're cheap as hell because there are so many of them.

@@wayfaringstranger8430 Sounds like a lot of fun, man. You never know when you'll need a Retroarch box as a last minute birthday present

TY! If you want it, here's a link www.rw-designer.com/cursor-set/real-hands

cool story bro

If you care about the size at that point, you’re probably working in an academic field; and most likely, the school you’re working with will front the costs of a RPI.

@@MarcoDotIOHuh? Almost the entire maker scene needs a smaller footprint than a whole chromebook.

@@MarcoDotIO really? There's a ton of RPi uses in the industry, especially the compute module.

I agree. To me, these 'Raspberry Pi Killer' videos only make sense if whatever they feature can run full PiKVM with device power control and USB hosting.

I heard that some of the Win11 PCs now can't be used, although maybe there is a bios change option for some.

I actually haven't messed with many projects that require GPIO pins, but that's good to know you can add them like that, like with off the shelf microcontrollers. There are a lot of Chromebooks out there with 1w processors, but I'm actually not as well versed on how much the entire SOC consumes for them. Intel stuff probably won't ever compete with ARM in terms of power efficiency, but they've reduced consumption a lot over the last decade on their lower end processors.

USB always adds latency. That may be okay for your project, but for some applications every Ms counts.

@@juliusfucik4011 yes, but also no, it depends on how well you use it, if the external GPIO also has memory then it can run things locally, then it could litterally be use like a SOC connected to a computer using a usb cable, meaning the normal default latency since you give the logic to the external GPIO module instead of only the pin states. then it could also be made to directly only communicate the pin state, this one would have a bigger latency indeed, but in reality most people will already have more latency even with embedded gpio due to using slow programming languages like python, micopython, or edited user friendly C++(like the default arduino methods). in reality if you care about latency you should use bitmanipulations directly. then there is also that usb 3.0 has 5000000 bits/s(5gbit/s), lets say you use 8bit messages, then the latency is only increased by 0.0000016seconds or latency would be equal to 0.625Ghz. real clocks differ, depending on how you set it up. real clock of usb2.0 is often around 240Mhz, real clock of usb 3.0 is often 2.56Ghz in reality, so probably a lot of it's speed by default is used for error correcting or such. getting GPIO to run at even half that rate is very rare, especially measuring and responding right at that speed. since in reality even the raspberry pi boards and arduino boards and such already have quite some latency added in based on additional hardware like amplifiers and such to make sure the output levels are right, and even in chip logic often takes multiple clock cycles, so people can run and do run it sometimes at pretty high speeds, but the latency is much higher than the input measuring speed and output speed, see it kind of like all the extra hardware steps in between act almost like a buffer all allowing the signals to go through at the right frequency but all adding some latency. this is actually why it was pretty safe for the raspberry pi 5 to use a external chip for GPIO, since it doesn't really affect latency at all in that case(they use a optimized communication way however), but for usb gpio, yes there will be some extra latency, especially when the gpio is made bad, but comparing it to normal gpio speeds the latency difference would even in this case be pretty hard to notice and would only be noticable in very rare cases like when you use the GPIO for something like a feedback loop or such at it's max frequency. but at that point, using GPIO isn't the right way at all since then normal GPIO would also create to much latency, and you would instead need dedicated hardware. perhaps there might be some GPIO more optimized for insanely low latency, the arduino uno has a relatively low latency since it comes directly from the IC in some cases(compared to its frequency speed). but for low latency it needs special optimized hardware since even most IC's take multiple cycles to actually output the data, even simple IC's like shift registers often take atleast one clock before they show their output, want low latency then you should use direct clockless logic, like using hex inverters, schit triggers, etc. where they will just instantly change, still the response time of the hardware would also cause latency, as well as the capacitance, voltage, resistance, induction, etc. doing it this way however can actually in some cases increase frequency and decrease latency, since it allows skipping the entire IC and instead using a custom usb protocol and then some dedicated direct hardware which can handle way higher frequencies much more easily and loses a lot of the latency. and as a third option a good usb GPIO could also be used in both modes, where you can write pins and read pins directly from the computer, but where you can also write the logic to it or to certain pins so the logic is run locally on the usb GPIO so that it uses the GPIO's own speed and latency, this can be for things like direct feedback and such, it would also ofload things from the computer, and at the same time you can also still directly write/overwrite and read things from the computer. but do know that when made right, latency can be very minimal, and next to that the frequency it can run signals at is not linked to the latency, meaning it can still handle high frequency signals, only if it would need to rapidly react to a signal at the max frequency or close to it, then latency becomes important. for example lets say you make a radio canceling device and the radio frequency is at the GPIO's ma frequency or close then little latency would be optimal, still due to the clock difference even a normal gpio would likely not be fast enough and would need to use either custom dedicated hardware or still use some logic to predict it or generate it based on some previous points, which isn't as latency sensitive.

@@juliusfucik4011 TLDR: yes and no, 1: a decent usb GPIO has way less latency than a ms. actually usb3.0 runs on 2.56Ghz, it is possible to run a usb GPIO direct without needing to talk to a SOC or such, just directly driving dedicated hardware which instantly translates the signals allowing signals to run at very high speed and low latency in a good USB GPIO. 2:it is also posible to have memory in the SOC/IC in the GPIO and a cpu, this essentially allows to send it instructions and logic instead of or next to directly controlling pins, by sending it logic instead of pin states, it can read or have interupts and directly respond based on those independant of the usb layer and such, allowing speed and latency similar to normal GPIO, in a good one it can do both independantly allowing for higher speeds since it essentially just got extra paralel compute performance. 3: Latency only really maters in very rare cases and only when programming for example directly in bitmanipulations and interupts, in C/low level C++ for example. since user friendly C++ like the default arduino methods already have insane amounts of latency in them and also lower speed, micro python, python, jave, etc. all have insanely low speed and insane latency compared to the user friendly C++ arduino uses, so even more compared to actual low level programming. and then these days many people using GPIO on a SBC will not only use python or such, but then they will use python+fs or such which is even slower(actually writing and reading files in the fs to abstract the ports instead of directly reading from the pins or ports. 4: GPIO is not meant for, made for, or designed for low latency. the IC in it is clock based and so gets latency from the IC clock, it also gets extra latency due to the extra layers added in like the latency between memory and cpu, cpio and output, output and amplifier for the gpio, capacitance, voltage, induction, resistance, etc. a typical chip with a GPIO is not optimized for low latency, it can handle high speed but not low latency, for that you would often need specially designed hardware or just low level made out of hardware, for trustable latency in a normal device with GPIO you would typically need to assume 4 cycles to get good enoug resolution so your signal should be 1/4th of the IC's speed, in some cases it is more, 1/4th because it often takes in between 1 to 2 clocks(1 clock+a little), but you need double that to be able to trust the latency. ther emight be some devices with GPIO which can be trusted more in their actual speed but even those still often require atleast 1/2th of clock speed at most. it is possible to make programmable dedicated hardware however which can give GPIO with lower latency, that is roughly the same as how example 1 works, but this is harder in a IC since the IC itself would still run at a limited clockspeed, but it is possible but it would be very different to program and design, but then again dedicated hardware has less thigns which can slow it down so is much more suitable for low latency high frequency is something usb GPIO can handle very well, low latency is something it does indeed create some extra latency, but you would only notice this when programming directly in low level C/C++ bitmanipulations and such, and have well optimized code. next to that there is also latency in the hardware

Glad this helped!

Screen and ports and shit

Even cheaper: Generic TV boxes with Android

Oh so how are all of those General Purpose IO going for you on that Chromebook? You know the MAIN reason to even consider a RPi?

true@@AMV12S

i could just get a usb to serial cable if i needed to. i personally mostly use these for micro-services that don't require a serial monitor. i run a service on them and shove them in a closet. still a good point for you to make though.@@stuartgray5877

Mmmmm :D

based i3wm user. this makes me more motivated to do this now

Can't get more badass than compiling milk from source with Portage.

Nice! Will the story be online or in print?

Update us here when you finish it.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to play with some other light weight distro and DE options. I just wish Mint had their customizations for Mate easier to implement on other distros. It's literally my favorite version of it, and there are plenty of other distros that aren't weird about installs under 16gb or storage.

This. Though, there is sometimes an overlap.

any computer can do work of any other computer; indeed land of stupid

I must be stupid that with my many Pi I use some for desktop and some for projects. Not using the pi for anything and everything that I need would be stupid, would it not? :P

Same.

Based

*mom finds the chromebook cluster server*

@@InwardRTMP another thing too. If yhe batteries are good they all have individual ups's for each node

Usually new top of the line pis with the 8gb ram are $80 just the board

That's awesome! Those lot deals are legit

Thanks, man! Going to try to put out more tech related stuff.

Actually never thought about doing it that way. It's kind of interesting seeing how small of a drive you can install a normal linux distro on (that isn't puppy linux).

That's kinda insane. Always super interested to see the hardware situation in Brazil, though. Like I forget if it's the import taxes for tech stuff or something similar. Nothing but respect for the birthplace of Godot (the engine) 👍

​@@steve-ramboGodot it's actually from Argentina! Hardware wise, we are actually suffering from the same issues as Brazil, sadly.

@@steve-rambo This year, any bought product above 50 dollars will be taxed in 92% of the selling price at AliExpress. Cellphones, notebooks, hardware, all for the double of price. Every old notebook is like gold here. And people buy a lot of shitty computers because they're "cheaper*.

@@IgnacioEsteves So close! :D The lack of hardware availability and the availability has gotta suck, but it totally makes for better devs that are more optimization minded for lower end hardware. A lot off latin american devs I've met are cool like that.

the idea is nice, but a lack of connectivity is an issue. I assume no ethernet or sata, which means running evverything via USB and I wouldn't want to trust that, though the low power consumption could make it worth it. I still think a core2duo system would do the job better and cheaper since they can be found pretty easily for free

👀

Sounds like you're ready to set up a really big LAN party

The short, easy answer is “less than traditional laptop, but more than Pi”

Good question, yes. From limited experience I think you'd have to tweak to get below 10w idle, probably 8w (w/o screen) is the lower limit. If that's about right, it's not too far off a rasp 4. Also, don't forget that generally options that make virtual hosts fast (e.g. more ram and m2 drives), do consume more idle power too.

That's a stretch. I know I have been disappointed by my RPI performance when trying to use them for anything not in the maker space. People don't seem to realize that while an RPI can run a server, NAS, HTPC, emulation station, or whatever else, there are much better options for the same or less money.

you can absolutely build out of old chromebooks if you put linux on them...sure they dont have gpio but not everyone wants to build robots or whatever some of us are content with servers and software projects...chromebooks can absolutely be a blank canvas

It's more like suggesting making your own canvas to save money

I mostly just included the $9 mark because it sounded good. The last few batches I've bought (10 w/o cords and 10 for w/ cords, both around the $90 mark with shipping) haven't had any duds. Really depends on how squeamish you on e-wasted tech (though, it would be great if e-waste was just free instead of parasitic racket it is now). It's sort of like Costco, you save when you buy on bulk. Worst case scenario: you sell a few for $12 a piece to recoup the cost. Or you could just donate them. As a Thinkpad guy, I always have at least 3 or 4 spare computers at any time. And these come and go on Ebay in just the same way as Thinkpads. You have to be there at the right time to get the best deal. The real goal of this video was more general education on flashing UEFI firmware on Chromebooks. There's a lot of people, even tech professionals, who aren't very familiar with Chromebooks, which is why you see these lots of 10 to 100 of them being sold at a time.

$9, what are you, some kind of a coward who needs macroeconomics to steal your China trash for you? Free hardware is all around, just ripe for the picking in the Western world. They LITERALLY proliferate this junk just so it would get refurbished after you paid their QA out of tax subsidies, so that they have something to show in Ethiopia in exchange for their bananas and tea from India. nothing to do with NOBODY knowing how to flash them, adults just don't want to. Just stop working, easy. No income, no tax. Just lots of time wasted on fiddling with your discount coupons for a chromebook, and hunting for sales instead of going to waste in a job that gains value, and lets you move large sums of your salary AFTER the tax and after the perks (That a company doles out to pay less tax). I mean, you REALLY think when they print you 70% and 30% for themselves, that this number on the record is ALL they print? Like fat off a pig's back.

@@steve-rambo admit it, you included "$9" as nothing more than a clickbait title. Lame video comparing apples and oranges.

​@@videotrexx I don't care. If even one person flashed UEFI firmware on one of these and didn't throw it in the trash because of this video, then it was worth it. I hate corpos locking down devices. Simple as.

Screw Emacs, this is the absolute peak use of a Chromebook

Well, I will say it is partially clickbait lol. I mostly wanted to educate people on how throwing other OSes on Chromebooks is a pain but still totally doable. A lot of people, even a lot of my coworkers, assume that they're just Google only machines. I've been lucky enough to find lots of these with the Chargers. Tho, it's pretty common for them not to.

Honestly pretty cool that a lot of students got to keep theirs

mmm since they're such good sizes and all

Stealing is always the most based option.

rlly? cant install rtc through usb? ^^

Yea! Hope you get some educational use out of em.

lolol I feel ya, this stuff creeps up on ya. At least 2 or 3 times a week, I wind up having to google stuff and am like "well, I guess this is a thing now"

I forgot that existed 🤯 and that it was (IIRC) the first Google hardware product to feature Pixel branding

@@kbhasi Yeah, it seems to be a pretty overlooked product these days but I doubt you could find a better-built ultraslim anywhere, and while it's a few generations old the i7 & 16GB RAM & 512GB SSD is still pretty decent for any ultraslim device. Even the first Google Chromebook with the Knight Rider LEDs on the cover is a wonderful machine to own if you do a BIOS reflash & use Linux on it like Garuda Linux. Google stopped updating these many years ago and it's running Chrome 0.93 (worthless!) so probably pretty cheap now. The keyboard is steller, the case feels like a solid slab of brushed aluminum, and lifting the display has that same perfectly weighted feel of the 2008 MacBook Pros (Apple's best design IMHO).

because they arent for "mini desktops" 😆

Raspberry pis used to be great but now are too expensive even at MSRP(if you can get it for MSRP at all) for what you get. SBCs like the rock64 blow it out of the water

Raspberry Pi 5 costs just like RPi4 and overall performance (for versions with higher RAM size) is much better than Chromebooks. It is also very small and you can power it just by modern Powerbank. And you have many peripherals for automation and projects. Not comparable to any simple laptop...

I went exactly that route after dealing with weird issues with an RPi 4 (that ended up bricked itself somehow yay). I got a refurbed MFF PC and everything went super smoothly.

Rock64 support and ecosystem kinda sucks. Seems they had supply issues a few years back too.,@@total_epicness6776

Honestly great use case. Chromebooks work great a little living room entertainment devices. Hope you can eventually get that 5190 flashed. There always seems to be weird ways to get around enrolled Chrombooks. Like, some will have you disconnect the battery and power then hold down power for 30 secs, other ones I've had let me do a power wash to get out of enrollment. It really can be the luck of a die sometimes tho.

@@steve-rambo It went into Developer Mode (Control D) after connecting the battery. It's really unbelievable these little computers for twenty dollars in 1983 we were storing our programs on music cassettes now this college campus in the middle of nowhere (Dakota State) is a top rated cyber school. The library doesn't have any books!!! All digital. It's mindblowing.

@@JohnGlen502 Nice! Yea, it's kind of crazy how much computing power we can get from next to nothing now, especially if you're coming from the world of data on tape lol

NP! Always an option to flash it and switch over once Google stops supporting ChromeOS on. Still great you were able to find a use for em. lol didn't even think of these as a garage computer, which sounds awesome.

I'm laughing way too hard at this

Yeeeea!!! Hope you have fun, man

That's true

no it doesnt NEED any of those things. Makers like me have hdmi tvs. they have keyboards mice and power supplies. Tell me you have no engineering experience without telling me you have no engineering experience. "just about every hardware project can be accomplished by using a USB cable/pigtail" Nope. Not even close.

Used mini-PCs are also an option. Businesses throw out old hardware that runs slow as fuck on the newest versions of Windows, but it's still zippy-fast if you install Linux on it.

Depends what you need it for. Many people use Pis as single-board industrial computers and don't bother connecting PC peripherals. Just log in remotely from another computer. Native GPIO is typically easier than needing to make everything a USB. For example needing to add bridge chips and drivers to your projects could be hidden costs, and complicates timing. But if you just need a cheap laptop or headless computer, sure, an old Chromebook could make more sense.

@@jhoughjr1 oh, and I suppose you got those HDMI TVs, keyboards and mice for free when you purchased you Pi.

Get a 4 dollar fake HDMI single and RustDesk into it. No further peripherals needed 🤷‍♂️ also, once it runs the way you want to, disable HDMI and just SSH to it. Also, good luck using an old notebook on a tiny mobile robot 😂

It's possible, but I'd grab a used server for TrueNAS or a Synology box, depending on how large your collection is and if you want redundancy. No harm in it, tho. I've know plenty of people to throw Plex on old machines.

Nice! Also, good choice w/ Arch. You can really install the bare minimum with it and get the most out these machines.

If you're on a system w/ system d (which is most systems) then this should work. github.com/sezanzeb/input-remapper If you're running something with a different init system, like Artix, then sxhkd will work. wiki.archlinux.org/title/Sxhkd

@@steve-ramboThank you for this!

Thanks :D

Thinkpads are pretty decent if you're looking for a laptop to hang around with. I have all of my Chromebooks set up as headless devices to hook up to TVs and stream to. Thinkpads are more my main for actual laptop use. Still need to do my misc Thinkpad trivia video at some point.

De people even buy Pi-s to use them a cheap desktop computer?

​@@tyatyI did and learn a little bit of linux. But then I used it as a low powered server for minecraft and node red. A mini pc or chromebooks could work better, but this is just my opinion.

@@tyaty yes, there are lots of videos on here that focus only on the desktop. I bought a 4gb pi4 years ago, partly because many videos make it look like a decent desktop but mainly because I wanted to learn Linux and then use it for some projects. When the 8gb version came out, I bought that to see if it made a difference, and it barely did. But, they aren’t exactly made for that so I used them both for projects and put Linux on my 10 yo old laptop. There are much better SBCs with GPIO that work great as desktops, but obviously cost more

@@user-28qhfk65 Low powered server is one of the viable use cases, but it is very suboptimal for desktop use. As son you start use it with a desktop monitor , the power savings compared to a 15w laptop beome insignificant. There are SBC-s whch are good for desktop use, Pi is not one of them. And the market for low power low cost computers is huge.

In their defense, it is a fairly common use case. I bought a Raspberry Pi back when they were actually $25 for this. Of course it's a big difference now and IF someone wants to buy one as a cheap PC there are a hell of a lot of better options.

just incase you wanted it lol www.rw-designer.com/cursor-set/real-hands

😎

I've gotta make a video at some point about why I still have it installed on my recording laptop. OneNote (long story, I've tried like 15+ replacements) and jglossator+cloe (hard to go back to kanjitomo) have me stuck until I can figure out better alternatives. One of these days I'll be able to run free software on all of these computers, hopefully. Windows 11 is garbage. Also TY!!

Depends on the Chromebook, but you can get get 5w or lower use on a lot of them

That plus a usb webcam if it works, or an esp32 cam with lipo charging circuit on board, wifi and sd card slot might work.

@@steve-rambo If you really want to save money, the best bet is a Pi Zero W. 10 bucks and very low power. I get it, it makes no sense to buy a Pi to make a tablet or desktop computer. Although honestly, a 15 year old thinkpad from the dumpster running Linux will blow the chromebook away. Sticking a laptop out in the woods running off a solar panel and battery is not a good option though.

@@ninline2000 It's just hard finding them at $10 if you're not hitting up microcenter regularly. The markup for zeros is kind of insane. T60s are still pretty good, but the lack of OpenGL3 or (especially) Vulkan support has bit me in the ass a few times. Really depends on the use case, tho.

:D www.rw-designer.com/cursor-set/real-hands

hmmmm :)

This is what I was doom scrolling for🙏😅

Yea, I mentioned the battery removal requirement for newer ones (if they're supported). There's still a lot of old ones with the screw, but MrChromebook's site is the best resource for figuring out which your Chromebook supports.

Define "better"? wasting 500 more watts on RGB? with a pi u can vm any os you want too.

Apparently you haven't REALLY used an RPi...

Look, I have a 5950X with a 3090 with 128 GB of RAM, but there is nothing it can do, the RPI can't do. Sure, the workstation does it a lot faster, but the point of and RPI was never to be a replacement for it. I use RPIs for mobile applications. Speech recognition, machine learning, AI in compact devices. Mobile robots. Ps. My workstation uses right about 45W when idling 🤷‍♂️