Reporting a successful install of 0.3.5~1 on a HP Chromebox G2 with an Intel Celeron CPU 3865U @ 1.80GHz.
I had to install a normal bios on it via mrchromebox but after that I was able to install start9 without issues, everything seems to work fine.
The device is definitely under-powered but it was also only $25 and can be powered by a USB-C PD power supply. Just keep in mind to make a change to the bios to get USB-C PD to work after you flash the bios, more info here.
That’s awesome! For about another $30 you can boost that guy to 16GB of RAM. Should make a fine little, dirt cheap server. Do you know a guide for replacing the BIOS?
There are also many other Chromebox devices (such as the Acer Chromebox CXI3) that are based on the same hardware architecture that have i3, i5, and even i7. I’m downloading the blockchain now and both cores are pegged at 100% so having more cores will help with running the bitcoin client. I imagine running electrs will take even longer.
When I said it would make a fine little server, I was not saying it would make a good Bitcoin node, at least not with the current version of StartOS. Maybe with this hack:
I replaced the SSD with a 1TB SATA SSD and it could take an NVMe drive as well. So from a storage perspective I think it will work as a Bitcoin node. The main issue with the G2 with the Celeron is the CPU is slow.
On the Lenovo M92p, I had significant problem and could not figure out how to keep the machine awake. Did you get that to work? I heard it needs a firmware patch to disable the sleep?
I have not encountered that problem myself, and didn’t patch anything. However, there is a big asterisk there, since it was heavily used when I purchased it (I basically had to cobble it back to life with bailing wire and duct tape), so I cannot say what was done to it by the prior owners. I still have it and can fire it up if you have anything you’d like me to check or some tests to run on it, etc.
BTW, I’ve not tested this (since I don’t have a server that is falling asleep on me), but since Start OS is built on Debian, you might try some of the relevant OS-level commands:
sudo systemctl mask sleep.target suspend.target hibernate.target hybrid-sleep.target
sudo sed -i 's/^#\?IdleAction=.*/IdleAction=ignore/' /etc/systemd/logind.conf
sudo sed -i 's/^#\?IdleActionSec=.*/IdleActionSec=0/' /etc/systemd/logind.conf
sudo systemctl restart systemd-logind
setterm -blank 0 -powerdown 0 || true
xset -dpms s off || true
Let’s continue the discussion on a new thread (or post over on this thread here, where we talked about the Lenvovo Thinkcentre M92p Small if you prefer).
Yep, you were right. It’s been syncing since 2025-09-30 and I gave up today, the blockchain was about 65% synced.
The next device I’m trying is an HP T640 thin client. I was able to install start9 on the HP T640 without any issues other than the wifi card wasn’t working. I tried another wifi card but it still did not work. I’m not sure I’ll look into the wifi card issue since I’ve been told in another thread that wifi will be removed from start9 in the future.
Nevertheless, I think we can add the HP T640 thin client to the list of supported Known good hardware. Might want to add to the Hp Chromebox G2 and just mention that the Celeron CPU is too low spec to run Bitcoin well.
Successfully running a Lenovo yoga 730-15ikb
added 32 GB DDR4 (8 GB on board), 2 TB NVME
BIOs - Secure Boot Disabled and switched to AHCI for SSD detection.
Still in process of syncing knots (+/- 22hrs by my calcs)
Running Hot 80-90 C, hopefully it will cool off when done syncing.
Heading to the donation page!
StartOS 0.3.5.1 works on the Topton X2F N150 (it is a solid fanless firewall mini PC). Note that I installed the bottom fan that it ships with, so I didn’t check the thermals in the fanless configuration. HDMI cannot be connected or it crashes during bootup. I did not test with the non-free ISO, only the normal one.
I’ve been running StartOS on two ZimaBoards without any (hardware-related) issues for years. The recently released ZimaBoard 2, with a PCIe NVMe SSD adapter, provides quite decent performance in a very compact form factor. I can recommend.