By the time I wrapped up investigation of the HP Split tablet/laptop convertible, the Targus type I adapter arrived. I needed it to charge the battery in the remaining two machines of my research assignment from NUCC. I set aside the HP Split and started charging the Toshiba Chromebook. Once the charge LED turned from orange to white, I turned it on and the answer to "why was this machine retired?" was immediately apparent.

Toshiba Chromebook 2 CB35-B3340 screen detail

There is a large diagonal crack across the middle of the screen. Sometimes when a screen is damaged we could still read the content around the crack, but not here. The entire screen is illegible. Turning the machine on and off a few times, I saw the content is not consistent between runs. Either Chrome OS is booting to a dynamic splash screen every time, or what's visible just have no correlation with the intended content.

Fortunately, this Chromebook has a HDMI video output port. Plugging it into a monitor, I see a very pretty picture of a night time landscape. This is probably a background picture, but without any controls, it is merely the secondary screen. The login prompt is still on the primary display I can't read.

Since this was my first Chromebook, I didn't know if there was a key combination I could press to toggle from this "extended" mode to "mirrored" mode where the login screen is sent to both displays. A little bit of research implied that there was, and a few minutes of fumbling found the magic keystroke: control plus an icon that might be maximizing a window or possibly going full screen.

Chromebook keyboard closeup

I'm not sure if it's common to all Chromebooks or specific to this model, but at the moment it doesn't matter. I can see the ChromeOS login screen on my external monitor, time to get down to business.