The chromebook used for this project has had its screen broken for a couple years and has been out of use ever since. The device was completely disassembled, leaving both the motherboard and the battery to be mounted on standoffs in the chassis. Also, ChromeOS was not acceptable for running headlessly, so I got Alpine Linux running natively and installed an ssh-server for remote access.

I was able to configure Chrome OS via an external monitor. However, by default, external displays are set to extended mode, which makes it hard to change the settings since the primary display is missing. The hotkey to toggle display mirroring is Ctrl + F4.

References:

• Alpine Linux

• Chromium OS Developer Guide

• Digi-Key 8" Rack Mount Chassis 1u

• Gentoo Embedded Handbook

• Google Support - Connect your Chromebook to a monitor

• Native Linux on Chromebook Guide

• Samsung Chromebook XE303C12