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!

Disclaimer: the current version of this page is entirely reconstructed from mailinglist posts from November 2016 by Charlotte Plusplus

Specification

The W520 comes in 4 quad-core configurations, and 1 dual-core configuration. The quad-core configurations support RAM up to 32GB.

Compared to the superseding W530 model it notably features the conventional keyboard, an eSATA port, and full-size DisplayPort connector.

For more detailed specifications, please refer to the ThinkWiki

Proprietary components status

CPU Microcode (optional)
VGA Option ROM (optional): the native graphics initialization tested gave video artifacts in SeaBIOS. When using VGA Bios there were none.
ME(Management Engine) => you do not have to touch it (just leave it where it is). Also the stripped down T420 version can be re-used.
EC(Embedded Controller) => you do not have to touch it (just leave it where it is)

Coreboot patch

An archive containing the W520 board support was posted on the Coreboot mailinglist. The patchset is based on the T530, but romstage additions for ram init were required.

Known issues

RAM Init seems to cause issues (discussion thread).
Native VGA init is not working reliably (discussion thread).
The coreboot configuration consumes more power than the vendor BIOS does (discussion thread).

Flashing

On first glance the W520 shows similarities to the T520:

As the plastic casing it conductive make sure to trim the leads when attaching a J100 header.
When flashing with a Raspberry Pi no external power is needed. The 3V source from pin 17 is sufficient. The pins WP and HOLD can be left floating. Make sure to insert all pins as once, as otherwise the W25Q64 might fail to respond.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Board:lenovo/w520