I ordered a Motorola Atrix Lapdock to connect it to my Raspberry Pi. It's fairly cheap thinking about what you get (11.6" 1366x768 screen, USB hub, keyboard, touchpad, battery, charger and a case that hosts all of them).
So, the lapdock has a micro HDMI male connector (type D) and a micro USB male connector. The raspberry has a type A HDMI female connector and a female micro USB connector. I tought of adding a male type A HDMI connector to the lapdock so that I could connect the RPi directly to the lapdock.
The HDMI type D connector is real small (@6mm wide) and is composed of 19 little wires (actually 18, CEC is not used). Here are some pictures with the original (disassembled) connector from the lapdock:
As you can see in the pictures, pin 7 is a GND pin which means the pinout is not compatible with the type A HDMI connector. After searching (and searching) the web for a type D connector pinout, I came across the following one which seams OK. I think the problem is that type D is not an HDMI standard (yet).
So, the rest of the work is unsoldering wires from type D connector and soldering them to the type A connector. Of course the cable from the lapdock is very short so I had to add some wires to make the little cable longer so I could centrally fit the type A connector. Also the USB cable had to be made longer so it could fit the Pi just right. After some holes, soldering and gluing into place some hours later, here are the results:
Replace the slow hard drive with a fast, albeit smaller, SSD
After upgrading the SSD the boot time went down to 9 seconds (by my watch), which seems as fast as my series 5 550. My total cost for this upgrade USD50 for the SSD and USD35 for the memory. I may be able to sell the 320G drive on ebay and recoup part of this.
Upgrading the memory
This is actually the easiest of the upgrades. All you need to do is buy the correct memory card and replace the one that is already there.
What you need
Philips screw driver
This machine has two memory slots, but only one memory slot is in use. This one slot holds 2G. Currently, the largest single memory DIMM (Dual Inline Memory Module) for this machine is 8G, so 16G is the max for this machine. I bought one 8G DIMM and put it into the empty slot, which gives a total of 10G. This should be plenty for most purposes. If bigger DIMMs become available, I will let you know.
Some people may be wondering how a 32bit OS can use more than 4G of RAM. This is possible because PAE (Physical Address Extension) is enabled in ChromeOS (as it is in almost all Linux builds). PAE still does not allow a single process to exceed 4G (actually more like 3G due to some other restrictions), but it does allow separate processes to each use up to 3G. The Chrome browser, for a number of reasons including security, runs each tab in a separate process. This means if you have two very large pages open, they can spread out in memory beyond 4G
.
If too many tabs are opened, at once, all the memory will be used.. Adding more memory allows you to have more concurrent tabs open before security officers start dieing.
WARNING:do not let any finger grease or dirt get onto the metal contacts.
The following table indicates what memory has been confirmed to work in this chromebook. It is in no way an endorsement of any company, nor a slight against any. It is only what has been tried.
Here are the basic steps:
Order your SSD.
Be sure you have an internet connection.
Check to make sure your chromebook is already working. This means testing every usb port, the VGA and the HDMI, the SD card reader, both the wired and wireless internet and the headphone jack. Once you open the machine it will be difficult to send it back and claim it was defective.
Be sure you have copied any local files to the cloud, or some other safe place.
Check out the instructions for creating a rescue USB/Thumb drive for your model, and create one. Be sure to do this BEFORE you take it apart. The easiest way to create it is actually from your ChromeOS machine. It already knows itself, and will create the correct version. In the browser omnibox (where URLs normally are) putchrome://imageburnerand follow the instructions.
Turn off, and unplug the machine.
Remove the battery.
Unscrew the one screw holding the back on and slide the back off.
Gently lift the drive out of its space.
Unscrew the two screws on the sides of the drive which hold a bracket that keeps the connectors from coming undone.
Remove the power/sata connector and set the drive aside.
If you ordered a 9.5mm thick SSD, you will need to get as much space as possible. Remove the sponge pads from the bottom of the space.
Attach the power/sata connector to the new SSD, and screw the bracket into the sides.
Seat the SSD into the same space the drive came from.
Slide the back back on. Note there are 4 small tabls on the corners and all need to engage at the same time as you slide the back.
Put the one screw back in.
Reinstall the battery and attach the power cable. The power cable will ensure the rescue operation is not interrupted.
Power on and the machine will prompt for the rescue USB/thumb drive you made earlier. Follow the instructions.
After it finishes, you will need to go through the same initial process as with a brand new machine.
