was updating my coreboot tree, rebuild after rebuild, etc

pretty sure i nuked one of the flash chips on the motherboard by keeping the clip connected (and powered & all) while powercycling.

i got away with it before, but i guess i rolled snake eyes this time. those are the bad ones, right?

edit: now that i think about it, i was able to read both flash chips without issue, and reflash them. it might just be a firmware issue, after all!

I've been trying for so long to replace my T530 but there's always and issue with these new thinkpads. The 480 I bought had a cracked mother board because the chassis is so flimsy and cheap on that generation. The T15 is better in that regard but oh my lord the touchpad is unusable. The tap to click requires me to slam the thing multiple times for it to maybe click on something. Two finger scroll will zoom constantly. 3 finger gestures just won't work half the time. Thinkpads have regressed so much it's embarrassing.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29217325

I've got a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 10th generation, which, from the start, IIRC was criticized for not having the best battery life, I think, because of its processor (12th Gen Intel Core i7-1280P × 14).

I thought I had read that using a more recent kernel might help the lowish battery life problem (I'm using 6.11.0-24-generic at the moment), but it doesn't seem to help much, if at all.

I tried using tlp, which meant uninstalling power-profiles-daemon, but this just made my laptop run hot, and also screwed up my battery when I tried to set charging thresholds (had to reset it by using the emergency pin hole), so I probably won't be trying that again. Reinstalled power-profiles-daemon, and now have it on power saver; so back to normal now, not running hot, but battery life still isn't great.

Anything else I could try? There's auto-cpufreq which I used for a while on an older laptop, but that was quite a while ago . . .

Hey, I'm having trouble locating a resource to order replacement mouse click caps on my T490.

I replaced my keyboard and accidentally broke the clip on the left click and unfortunately the old keyboard is a slightly different design and thus also does not work.

The combination of key words only have been pulling up replacement keyboards and nipple caps.

I know this a Thinkpad community but I just found out what a Thinkcentre and Thinkstation are and they look interesting. A Thinkcentre M920q, for example, looks like a good home server candidate and used versions are very cheap on eBay.

My beloved T420's bezels are coming apart at the hinge. This has already happened once---I glued the plastic back together---but now is a very inconvenient time for it to happen again. So I'm thinking of upgrading.

For me, the most important factors are:

1. Portability - I have to carry my laptop with me on a nearly daily basis.
2. Linux support.
3. A good keyboard, preferably without the numpad.
4. An HDMI port.
5. Good battery life (~5 hours with active use should be plenty but more is welcome).

I'm thinking of going with the 8th generation X1 carbon but I'd like to hear your opinion.

Hi, after dropping my thinkpad, the battery got slightly messed up. I have to move a battery pin to have it fit in the slot, the battery charging status is often not read by Linux, and sometimes power won't be received even without the battery. I'm hoping the solution would just be figuring out how to remove the pin stuck in the motherboard slot (attempts so far have evaded me) and getting a new battery, but what does it look like to you? Thanks!

This is an aggressive method for when isopropyl alcohol on a towel is too slow or requires too much elbow grease. See the caveats section!

Materials

• Isopropyl alcohol, 100 mL or more
• Copper or copper-coated scourer
• Heavy-duty scrubbing pad (like the green piece on top of dish sponges)
• Magic eraser (replace with non-scratch scrubbing pad if not available)
• Paper towels
• A couple of hours

PPE

• Adequate ventilation
• Dust mask (microplastics)
• Sturdy, waterproof gloves, or in my case, non-waterproof fiberglass gloves over thin foodservice gloves
• Old clothes (stains)

Method

Remove power, batteries, and any electronic components you can.

This is an iterative process, so not every step has to be done perfectly in one pass.

Magnesium parts (usually the lower chassis and lid)

• The rubber coating is bound more strongly here than on plastic parts.
• Wet an area about 5 cm in diameter with isopropyl alcohol. There should be a shallow puddle of it where you will scrub.
• Scrape off the rubber coating: rub the copper scourer firmly in circular motions. It should begin to slough off with the consistency of boogers.
• Continue until no more rubber scrapes off, then repeat until the entire surface has been scoured.
• Remove residues: wet areas 5 cm in diameter as before and scrub, but now with the scrubbing pad.
• Wipe: moisten a paper towel with isopropyl alcohol, wipe off the entire surface, and let dry.
• Inspect: once dry, look for any outstanding rubber patches. Go over them again starting with the copper scourer, using lateral motions if it is especially stubborn.
• Polish: Moisten a magic eraser with isopropyl alcohol and firmly scrub over the entire surface.
• Finish: Wet a paper towel with water and wipe off until melamine dust from the magic eraser is gone and the surface no longer stains the towel black.

Plastic parts

• Same as previously, but omit the copper scourer.
• Whereas the sloughed off rubber just migrates up into empty spaces in the copper scourer leaving the working edge exposed throughout the process, the rubber will foul scrubbing pads. Either have several pads on hand or wash out the rubber with soap and water.

Cleanup

• Soap and water

Caveats

• This process severely defaces stickers, the ThinkPad emblem, and glossy surfaces
• Direction of scrubbing is evident in fine scratches throughout treated surfaces. In my opinion, a scuffed ThinkPad is better than a sticky ThinkPad; I did not try further polishing or restoration steps.
• Results on painted magnesium will be uneven, with some patches of primer standing out where the rubber degraded more slowly and magnesium showing through on edges and corners after scrubbing.
• Rubber debris will get caught in grilles. Scrape it out at the end using a toothpick.
• Anything sloughed off will stain anything it contacts.

How it works

The rubber, once degraded, cannot be rejuvenated, but may be scraped off with fingernails. Copper and scrubbing pads, with a similar hardness to fingernails, can perform the same scraping action, sped up with the addition of isopropyl alcohol, a solvent for the rubber, primer, and paint. Still, the rubber will not just dissolve like sugar in water. The key is the scraping action, otherwise the soft rubber just ends up getting pushed around the surface.

The nature of rubberized soft-touch coatings on ThinkPads and other electronics, to my knowledge:

• The coating is a thin layer of polyurethane or otherwise synthetic unvulcanized rubber.
• With exposure to ambient moisture, molecules in the rubber eventually undergo hydrolysis, where the rubber polymer chains are broken up by intruding water molecules.
• Result is a soft, sticky mess as the petroleum-based rubber gradually returns to its natural state.

On a ThinkPad, each part may have a slightly different rubber coating

• Magnesium chassis: Rubber coating strongly bound to a primer layer, which lies on top of the black paint over the magnesium itself.
• Large plastic pieces (old E-series palmrests, antenna enclosure of X230): Rubber coating bound directly to smooth black plastic or a primer on top of smooth black plastic.
• Small plastic pieces: Rubber coating bound loosely to smooth black plastic.

Personal observations regarding the above:

• The coating wears out fastest on corners and edges.
• Rubber coatings degrade at different rates across different parts. On my X230, the coating on the lid was in much better shape than the lower chassis (both are magnesium parts).

What didn't work (all tested on my beater ThinkPad):

• Rubbing with just an isopropyl alcohol-soaked paper towel
• Just an isopropyl alcohol-soaked magic eraser
• Water-based baking soda paste
• Toothpaste
• Olive oil
• WD-40
• Hand sanitizer
• Soap and water
• Isopropyl alcohol with a screwdriver (deep, narrow scratches)
• Baby powder (comes off and turns sticky again after a week of use)

What worked too slowly

• Isopropyl alcohol-based baking soda paste
• Non-scratch scrubbing pad
• Isopropyl alcohol with a copper coin

What was not tried, mostly because I didn't want to spend over $10:

• Plasti-dip
• D-Limonene
• Methylated spirits
• Goo gone

I bought a ThinkPad T440p with Libreboot and SeaBIOS installed. I'm planning to upgrade the CPU to an Intel Core i7-4910MQ, but before purchasing, I wanted to double-check if there would be any compatibility issues with Libreboot and whether the computer would recognize the new CPU.

Recently i got an T14 g5 amd with the 8840u cpu. The laptop itself is really nice overall. But this thing does have coilwine, even on powersave mode. Cpu and gpu wise, the T14 g5 intel 155H should be kinda similar. Does someone has this laptop and can tell if this one has a problem with coil wine?

My T480 runs hot and sometimes the fan is really loud. Occasionally upon boot it'll give me "fan error." Tried reapplying the thermal paste but that didn't help much. It's got plenty of storage, ram, and an i7 processor, so it's not for lack of power that it's doing this.

At this point I'm thinking of investing in a fan/heatsink upgrade, but what do y'all recommend I upgrade the fan/heatsink to?

Has anybody else expierenced the same issue?

Basically, a collection of notes on building and running libreboot on t480. Hope it helps sb avoid a few pitfalls I've personally encountered. Corrections/other ways to do stuff are welcome.

1. If you're building libreboot from source like I did, you may want to replace repo URLs with mirrors in config/git/grub, as gnu repos are slow AF;
2. To boot your system, you'll need it to either be bootable via legacy bios (libreboot uses seabios by default), or, more realistically, have grub bootloader. On NixOS, I've changed the bootloader config to:

boot.loader.grub = {                          
  enable = true;                  
  device = "nodev"; # generate grub.cfg without installing grub itself  
  theme = lib.mkForce null;       
  font = lib.mkForce null;        
  splashImage = lib.mkForce null; 
};                                

Notice the disabled theming/fonts/background image: in my case, libreboot's grub would only show the blank screen 'til I disabled them, so you may want to trim your config to only menu entries or something. Then when booting, you simply press ESC, choose grub, and select either loading the OS or searching for bootloader configs on NVMe.

3. If you didn't do [2], and are unable to boot your system, you may have some trouble with seabios not seeing your live USB you're bringing to fix that. In this case, try again a few times: as far as I can tell, that happens when you press ESC too early.
4. Having seabios auto-start grub: echo '/rom@img/grub2' > bootorder && cbfstool libreboot.rom add -f bootorder -n bootorder -t raw (slightly modified command from here). Dumping and re-flashing libreboot without an external programmer is done with flashprog -p internal and requires iomem=relaxed in kernel cmdline;
5. Annoying stuff: FnLock turns on when booting or waking up from sleep; unsure on how to disable this as nvramtool refuses to work (mb a skill issue). Also, disconnecting the external battery while the laptop is powered on seems to cause a reboot.
6. Libreboot's grub can be themed: see this for how it's currently done (although, note, that we need config/grub/xhci/config/payload and not config/grub/default/config/payload) and this for an example of how it can look.
7. Battery stuff, probably related to the Embedded Controller's firmware: charge thresholds don't seem to work (and the corresponding files are missing), ~~/sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/energy_{now,_full{,_design}} are now charge_full{,_design}, new option current_now~~ [Edit 3: this seems to be related to changes in the kernel or something]

[Edit] 2 more bugs:

1. ~~Charge cycles are always 0 [mb an issue with my batteries, tho]~~ [Edit 4: at least one person reports their batteries reporting charge cycles as intended; likely the problem with my batteries];
2. ~~The laptop constantly tries to power on if it dies due to depleted battery.~~ ~~[Edit 4: Possibly a one-off or a different reason altogether, couldn't trigger it again.]~~ [Edit 5: reproduced it; seems to happen when both batteries are present and upower is not installed; works fine with upower, tho]

[Edit 2]:

1. charge measurements don't play well with cosmic-epoch on nixos in my particular case: the percentage doesn't seem to get updated, but looks somewhat correct upon reboots;
2. Reduced backlight brightness range: /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/max_brightness is now 15, and not ~1515 as it was before.

[Edit 5]:

1. Mute/micmute indicators not working;
2. Monitors connected via the dock aren't detected when hot-plugged (works fine on {re,}boot, mb distro-related?)

im looking into replacing my current x230 and framework laptop with an old thinkpad.

my requirements are: great linux support, compact (as much it can), alum or metallic body.

good to have: boxy look, model after 2018, coreboot/libreboot (i doubt new models are supported but one can dream)

does this thing exists?

Building Coreboot

• Significantly easier and lower risk than I expected. A lot is already taken care of once the mainboard is selected. There are many safety and sanity checks in the build process.
• Make sure to select "General Setup">"Option backend to use">"Use CMOS for configuration values" so that nvramcui and nvramtool works.
• Even if flashing only the top chip, build for the entire 12 MB ROM. Otherwise, the machine won't have the correct offset for the MRC cache and will cold boot when it should be resuming from suspend.

Installing Coreboot

• I am not yet confident enough to use an external programmer with my 3612QE board, so I opted for the 1vyrain route.
• Extracted the top 4MB of coreboot.rom using dd and once booted in the 1vyrain installer, overwrote /root/bios/X230.rom (double-check this for yourself, just going off my memory here) and let it flash the chip. This workaround to avoid having to upload my bios somewhere and connect 1vyrain to the internet.
• After that, the bios region of the chip is unlocked. To update the bios with a new build, run sudo flashrom -p internal -i bios --ifd -w build/coreboot.rom --noverify-all
• In the event of GRUB misconfiguration, run set prefix=(memdisk)/boot/grub, ls your way to your grub.cfg (the one in the boot partition, not the one in EFI) and get back into Linux with configfile (disk,part)/path/to/your/grub.cfg

Observations

• Boot times are fast, only 2.5 seconds to the LUKS password prompt
• All components are recognized and seem to work as usual.
• Battery life is good. About 1 W increase in idle power consumption over the regular BIOS.
• The wifi card changed from wlp3s0 to wlp2s0
• The 3612QE CPU, QM77 chipset, and Coreboot all have documented ECC support. Regardless, the machine still does not boot if ECC RAM is installed. Bear in mind that I only had one such stick of RAM (SK Hynix EP3L-12800S 8GB) to test.
• The 3612QE board now charges with a stock 65W charger.
• I am using the ME Disable option in nvramtool for now. Eventual goal is to use me_cleaner.

Quirks

• The power button LED occasionally does not light when booted. No obvious cause yet and no adverse effects associated with it.
• Rarely and without obvious cause, the reported battery percentage suddenly drops to 0. Immediately upon plugging in the charger, the correct percentage comes back.
• This may or may not have to do with the installed 9-cell Kingsener battery. My other corebooted X230 with an i5-3320M and DTK 6-cell has been used equally as much without ever encountering this issue.
• EDIT: the issue is indeed related to the Kingsener battery. The battery also jumps back to a normal percentage within a few seconds even if I don't plug in a charger. No work lost due to the issue yet.

So, I'm making this post because I'm currently torn between 3 options:

• Upgrade my current T450 with 16GB of DDR3 and a 256GB (or maybe 512GB) NVME which has an i5-5300u and 1080p display
• Get a T14(s) G1 with an AMD CPU (for about 400 euros or so)
• Save up for a long time to buy a Framework laptop

The role of the laptop would be to do some software dev tasks and some light gaming (think ULTRAKILL, Minecraft and KSP, so really not anything that can't run on a good enough iGPU). Battery isn't much of a priority, since I'll use it plugged in most of the time, but it is preferred for when I do need it, nevertheless I don't wish to sacrifice CPU performance for it like what my T450 does when it crawls to 800MHz to extend its battery life from 4 hours to 5 hours (it has a dual 3-cell setup, both batteries at about 75% health). While I can save up a lot for a Framework or even a T14 Gen 5/6, I'd rather not because I just don't find it worth it for the price, and because It'd wear down my patience. Another large priority is durability, I am insanely clumsy. For example, one time I dropped my T450 at the very edge of a table so that it hit my foot and broke its old 1366x768 panel (good riddance, that resolution was atrocious). From what I can remember, most ThinkPads are in some way MIL-STD certified (80G or 80H depending on the model IIRC), starting with (unfortunately for my T450) the T460. I'd also like at least an FHD or higher display, but everything I've listed passes that. The only real benefit here for a Framework is the "eternal laptop" concept where I don't have to replace the laptop itself, ever, because I can just upgrade the parts in a Thesseus' ship kind of way, like some desktop users do, but parts are scarce here in Greece, especially for Frameworks, so I'd have to get them shipped from their website which is not ideal. If there are any other ThinkPad options (available in Greece!) at about the price of the T14, then I'd be glad to hear them.

To conclude, here are my priorities, grouped from highest priority to lowest priority:

• Available in Greece, preferrably at a physical store
• CPU Performance, Durability
• Resolution, Repairability
• Battery life

That is, turned on its side so the display is vertical, using an external keyboard. I'm thinking of getting one of the Yoga models, which are naturally suited to that. I run primarily browsers, emacs, and maybe calibre, under Debian GNU/Linux. My questions:

1. Any issues getting the X server to work that way?

2. Any issues with cables having to stick out of the edges and poke things? At minimum a power cable, but i like to use Ethernet instead of WiFi when I can.

Thanks!

I found this in near immaculate shape, for $2 at a Goodwill.

I'm trying to figure out what "era" (for lack of a better word) that this ThinkPad bag belongs to.

I'm maybe more specifically trying to find out if it's an appropriate match for my A30p.

Just got it today so I haven't had much time to play with it yet. But feel free to ask me anything about it and I'll answer when I can. The model I got has the non-touch 100% sRGB 400 nits display.

Yesterday this usb port works as usual, but today I turned on the notebook and just nothing. I tried to connect usb stick, phone, but nothing. lsusb can's see it. What can I do, what can I check?

So, I think we all know how when companies upgrade they sell all their old laptops, flooding their market and making them insanely cheap, ThinkPads being the most well known for this.

Now, in places like the US there are a lot of stores for this, such as eBay. But I'm in Greece and I'm not keen on international orders (shipping costs, potential tariffs if extra-European, several other reasons).

Does anyone know of any (trustworthy) stores for used ThinkPads in Greece? I've looked at some already and they have some nice deals (particularly on T495s, X1s and T14s) but I want to make sure I'm getting the full picture.

UPDATE: After flashing coreboot with the option to "Enable ECC if supported", ECC RAM still does not work. The screen and lights come on and the speakers emit a continuous high tone. The memory tested was an 8GB stick of 2Rx8 EP3L-12800E from SK Hynix. It is unbuffered ECC to the best of my knowledge. I'll write up my thoughts on corebooting this particular board when I have used it for some more time.

After learning that the 3612QE itself supports ECC RAM in contrast to the stock CPU options and that the QM77 chipset also does, I purchased a DDR3 SODIMM with unbuffered ECC. I have not been aware of any other attempts to test this combination.

The machine did not POST and did not produce any beep codes. Absolutely no response to any input aside from shutting down when briefly holding the power button. Everything returned to normal upon putting the original RAM back.

I suspect the BIOS lacks support, but whether this changes with coreboot remains unknown to me, at least until I learn how to prepare and flash coreboot.

This is purely an exercise in curiosity.

Does anyone know how to order or configure the P14s G5 AMD with a OLED display on the German Lenovo site?

The OLED display seems to be NA exclusive apart from a few overpriced offers from third party sites...

Found it on a local market place site, the seller said it's a Lenovo T14 Gen4

I'm looking to replace the battery of a ThinkPad T410 (and maybe of a T480 as well but i haven't tested them yet).

What are the recommended places to get them in the EU?

I've already found ifixit for the T480 but i'm more focused on the T410 atm.