If you are one of the rare folk who’ve encountered my ordeals with installing Linux on a refurbished chromebook, well I have an update for you. But let’s recap.
I’ve managed to follow through Mr.Chromeboxtech’s tutorial. I’ve understood that absent a CCD cable, CR50-locked Chromebooks can be fully overwritten with disconnecting the battery and powering it with the power cord. However, what’s blocking me was a bootloop preventing me from loading into the “OS Verification Off” screen. Recovery mode showed that the Chrome OS was missing or damaged.
Failing to find a solution, I originally thought that you actually need a CCD for this Chromebook. I thought that the syntactic differences between chultrabook’s and Mr.Chromeboxtech’s supported devices supported my ideas. It does not really help that there are barely any forum posts out there documenting bootloop ordeals when overwriting CR50-based Chromebooks. More so that only an Etsy listing from the US is the final source for ChromeOS Debug Cables.
But then, when taking a leap of faith, I tried redoing it again. Something changed in the process.
I got out of the bootloop.
The first error screen I had was, instead of a bootloop, a screen that the device does not contain ChromeOS. I reasoned that the boot process was reading off the SD Card I used to dual boot, the same SD Card slot used for recovery. I removed that Linuxed SD Card. And I booted again.
And loaded the “OS Verification Screen”. Success.
And it was just a matter of booting but not logging into ChromeOS, loading the terminal with Ctrl+Shift+F2, and loading the full firmware overwrite from the script as the tutorial would have had it. And now I have a Asus C204MA running full Linux out of the box. I no longer have to do a sequence of key presses just to dual boot it.
What changed?
I speculate it has something to do with the power supply. If the current in your electric line is not sufficient, it might not be enough to fully boot into the eMMC. It was definitely not something to do with the current Chromebook firmware, as doing recovery and powerwash did not impact this bootloop at all.
Another speculation, though I really doubt this, is the way you disconnect the battery from the motherboard? Well in this model, there is a thin steel strip that holds the battery cord in place to the motherboard, and you have to nudge it back out so that you can fully dislodge the white plastic keeping the connection in place. I used to return the thin steel strip to its locking position after removing the connector to prevent the battery from accidentally reconnecting. In this new scenario, I didn’t return it, just let it be in its unlock position. The battery connector was rely dangling it close to the connection when I flipped the Chromebook back after doing the overwrite. I don’t this is as sound as the power supply hypothesis though, but it is something to consider.
So if you encounter the bootloop while disabling CR50 Chromebooks via battery connection, maybe make sure that you have a steady power connection. Maybe double and triple check and adjust your USB-C connector too; the weight of the cord might be weakening its attachment.
Aftermath: Getting the sound and function keys working.
Out of the box, a Linuxed ASUS C204MA will not have working audio and function keys. There are two scripts that you will have to run to get this to function.
First is WeirdTreeThing’s audio script. There is a caveat though, the author disclaims support for Ubuntu and Ubuntu based distros. Archisman Panigrahi in this AskUbuntu post answered that all you needed to do is to edit the script to comment out the exit() line underneath the def ubuntu function. Clone the repo, edit it, maybe reboot, and the audio is detected. And damn there’s some decently loud audio in this machine. Rivals my phone.
Another is WeirdTreeThing’s keyboard mapping script. Just clone and run that.
And there you have it. An ASUS C204MA saved with Linux from the eventual death of ChromeOS. Haven’t you heard? Google is actually planning to focus on Android-based laptops instead.
Edit: 8/12/2025 - the function keys in Chromebook will work as it were with Chromebook; I could not get it to behave as it should in the generic F1-F12 fashion. Also I could not get the audio to fully stay; the WeirdTreeThing's docs blame ubuntu on this, so I might just reinstall Debian on it someday.