I picked up a Lenovo Thinkpad x131e in mint condition for $40 a couple of
months back; I thought I'd use it for playing around with Chrome OS.
As soon as I plugged it in, I got the "Chrome will no longer be updated"
message. Bummer.
I figured I'd turn it into a Linux box and did some poking around on the
web. I found a great web page https://mrchromebox.tech with a lot of
information about Chromebooks and BIOSes.
Downloaded the hardware reference manual (Thanks, Lenovo, for keeping up
with IBM's reputation for docs) and opened the system up. swapped the 2x2GB
memory sticks for 2x4 I had laying around after another upgrade, and swapped
out the bog-standard 32GB 2.5" SSD for a 480GB SSD.
Flip a write-protect switch inside, flip it.
Put the whole thing back together, Lenovo has continued the other IBM habit
of noting the size of the screw next to the screw hole.
Put everything back together, booted into developer mode, opened a shell,
ran a 3 line script and updated the BIOS. Reboot, downloaded Bodhi Linux
onto a stick, booted to the stick and installed Linux on it.
Nothing went awry, and the whole process took around 45 minutes.
The hardware is nothing to write home about - it's a 1.5 ghz celeron with
Ivy Bridge chipset, but it *was* $40. Decent screen, touchpad and
trackpoint, and a nice Lenovo "Island" keyboard. 2 USB 3 ports, onboard
ethernet, VGA and HDMI, and a SD card slot.
... Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail.
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