about C100PA

5 Antworten [Letzter Beitrag]
Masaru Suzuqi -under review-
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Beigetreten: 06/06/2018

Hello. I got a new chromebook C100PA and Alfa AWUS036NHA (AR9271) recently, with something complicated feelings.
I am going to buy the Wireless-n Router too, later.
I am going to play with this laptop for a while as study, until the day which it is compromized, and after the day.
This laptop's box was sealed by the transcriptional Asus tape and the battery was empty. It seems it was imported 2 years ago.
Before turn on the laptop at the first time, I don't know whether or not I should pull of the two cables which the wifi device? chipset? (BRCM4354) has. Or cut the chipset right in half.
Would you please tell me is that unnecessary stupid work?
And in my poor knowledge, I assume that the purpose of installing libreboot is to rewriting those EC firmwares.
Is that right? and are there other purposes in spite of it is coreboot or u-boot?
I still don't understand well what the boot is and I still don't have confidence if C100PA can be librebooted or not but anyway I am going to break it. So never mind about it, please. Thanks.

Magic Banana

I am a member!

I am a translator!

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Beigetreten: 07/24/2010

Libreboot does not support that laptop: https://libreboot.org/docs/hardware/#list-of-supported-hardware

See the "About the libreboot project" section on https://libreboot.org/docs/ too.

About the Wifi (and other peripherals) support, boot (with the current proprietary BIOS) Trisquel 8's ISO and see: https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/starting-installable-live-system

Jodiendo
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Beigetreten: 01/09/2013

MAGIC BANANA
good ANSWER that one. ill bet you they don't like your answer at all.
TELL ME,HOW MANY LEGS A COW HAS FROM MARS, ASK THE ALIENS FROM

STARTRECK...

Masaru Suzuqi -under review-
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Beigetreten: 06/06/2018

OK, I shot my .45 caliber (for Jap) at the chipset. What should I do next?

Masaru Suzuqi -under review-
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Beigetreten: 06/06/2018

I have just disassembled my laptop. I did merely open the bottom case to see inside, and practice.
But I did not know disassembling was such interesting. Then I thought that I wanted to report this.
Then next, I felt thanks. Thank you very much.

Masaru Suzuqi -under review-
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Beigetreten: 06/06/2018

I have been searching about C100PA often. A few days ago, I participated in Coreboot mailig list. Before that, my primary purpose was knowing whether it can be librebooted or not, and wether it has meaning or not.

First, the Libreboot site writes that "More RK3288-based laptops will be added to libreboot at a later date." I don't know when this was written. Anyway then I found some information.

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreboot-dev/2016-08/msg00021.html

https://gist.github.com/AliceGrey/41296c6d38955cdb882c73a470b26050

The writer writes that in the page:
"Now lets remove that write-protect screw so we can flash Libreboot." I understand how to disable the write protection, but at the bottom of the page, "...type shell, sudo su and and flashrom --wp-disable. ", "####Flashing libreboot
COMING SOON" were written. I don't know why the writer did not continue writing until the end of the process. It was written in 2016. I don't know what happened.

So anyway there are people who succeeded librebooting C100PA.
Of course I believed so. But if so, I don't understand why there is no the comprehensive page in the web about it.

I also found some sites which seemed to be useful.

https://rosenzweig.io/blog/living-on-a-rockchip.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/5mzpd4/flashing_bios_asus_c100pa_chromebook_flip/

In the latter link, someone writes:
"And please, please, do not even consider libreboot, it's a really stupid idea." maybe about librebooting C100PA. But I wanted to know why.

I now couldn't find other site which I have seen but which was written about librebooting C100PA in Notabug.
It was a short discussion with the former writer and someone. She seems she has a conviction that it can be librebooted and writes that there is a ROM image for C100PA in somewhere. But I could not find it after all. I wanted the link.

Of course, I was really confused. I had taken to search info quite long time until then.
I also failed to install Arch Linux Arm several times, and nor Kali. It seems there are some people who failed installing Debian, Arch, on C100PA neither. It seemed to be complicated to install it on the laptop. I got tired.

Then finally, I sent email to Coreboot mailing list. Some users gave me reply.

In short, "This board does not use any proprietary
firmware or blobs (neither with factory firmware nor if you reflash it
with a current version of coreboot)"

"It does however need proprietary
kernel drivers if you want to use the GPU."

"Note that the factory firmware on this laptop is already "as secure as
possible". Chromebooks are among the most secure computers you can buy
if you use them with the native Chrome OS."

Then it seems installing other GNU/Linux on this laptop has not special merits at least about security.
He seemed to be reliable and sincere since his writing. Maybe he is a developer of Chromium. He seemed that he was caring about even difficulties which I would encounter later. He gave me clear understandable detailed explanation, those were exact the answers to my questions. I want to trust his words but I am still not sure, a bit.

If there is anyone who can tell me any information or opinions about this not understandable situations, I would appreciate it very much. Of course I searched other quite a lot of sites for the information, too. If the fact was near the worst, I might get a bit mad for my resources. Maybe I have the right to get mad, to demand damages. There must been other users who like me. It has nothing to do with free or not. It is a matter of common sense. If you do it, do it until the end, or do not do it from the begginig. Someone gets loss, it is NOT free. Thanks.