The wiki is being retired!

Documentation is now handled by the same processes we use for code: Add something to the Documentation/ directory in the coreboot repo, and it will be rendered to https://doc.coreboot.org/. Contributions welcome!

Flashing on the laptop instructions.

Lenovo X60, X60s, T60 and T60p flashing instructions.

These Lenovo laptops have a register that must be flipped before coreboot can be flashed.

For those/some models with SPI flash chips you have also to modify flashrom. Because the chipset locks down the available commands that flashrom can send to the flash chip, you also need to change the flashrom source in a way that is not suitable to upstream. Flash chips can be identified by various commands (REMS*, RDID etc.). Some of them reply with an ID for the vendor and the exact chip model; others just reply with a single byte which is fine if there is only a small number of chips to distinguish, but won't work for the huge number of flash chips known to flashrom. The problem with the vendor BIOS is that it forbids the higher quality identification commands, so you need to force flashrom to use the lower quality opcode for the chip in your Thinkpad. You have to know the chip model beforehand (e.g. by inspection).

You will need: the flashrom source, a small patch for it, and the bucts utility.

Patch flashrom to use RES1 SPI identification and spi_chip_write_1 for your flash chip, as well as change the flash chip model id to fit the RES1 command.
Alternatively, you can copy the existing definition first as it is done in this patch. Choose either method: apply the patch in the link, or do the patch yourself, as per instruction below.
- Find the definition of your flash chip in flashrom's flashchips.c
- Change the .probe field to probe_spi_res1
- Change the .model_id field to the RES1 ID given in the datasheet of the flash chip
- Change the .write field to spi_chip_write_1
Run flashrom -p internal:laptop=force_I_want_a_brick -r factory.bin
This step is IMPORTANT since the factory BIOS in your machine is tied to your particular system board (or "planar" in IBM FRU terms) with a unique ID not present in factory BIOS updates.
Run dd if=coreboot.rom of=top64k.bin bs=1 skip=$[$(stat -c %s coreboot.rom) - 0x10000] count=64k
Run dd if=coreboot.rom bs=1 skip=$[$(stat -c %s coreboot.rom) - 0x20000] count=64k | hexdump
Verify that the complete range is filled with ff bytes before proceeding! The above command must output:

0000000 ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff

*

0010000

If this is not the case, the coreboot image needs to be rebuilt with the second-to-last 64kbyte block unused.
Run dd if=top64k.bin of=coreboot.rom bs=1 seek=$[$(stat -c %s coreboot.rom) - 0x20000] count=64k conv=notrunc
Run bucts 1
Run flashrom -p internal:laptop=force_I_want_a_brick -w coreboot.rom
This will be slow, it will output errors for addresses 0x0 and 0x1f0000 when working with a 2 Mbyte flash chip, and it will say "FAILED!" at the end, see Peter's mail before you panic.
Power cycle the machine (i.e. a cold boot, not just a reboot), now starting with coreboot
Run flashrom -p internal:laptop=force_I_want_a_brick -w coreboot.rom.
This will successfully overwrite the entire flash chip, including the last 64k that were write protected with the factory BIOS.
Run bucts 0

Recovery

If you had a bad flash you will need a recovery method.

Required/advised hardware and informations

X60 Hardware Maintenance Manual (for disassembling the laptop)
An SO-8 IC clip, like the Pomona 5250 for instance.
An external flashrom programmer

Howto

wire the pomona clip to a programmer

Disassemble carefully the laptop, the SO-8 chip is on the bottom of the mainboard...
connect the pomona clip to the BIOS chip
flash coreboot or the BIOS
remount the laptop

Coreboot configuration

It's advised to make SeaBios(instead of coreboot) run the VGA option rom by disabling CONFIG_VGA_ROM_RUN:

[ ] Run VGA Option ROMs

in make menuconfig. Note that you still need to include the option rom in coreboot:

[*] Add a VGA BIOS image

See VGA_support for details on how to include the VGA BIOS image.

Status

Thinkpad X60s Status

Board:lenovo/x60/Installation