Guide to booting from SD card on X61t (will probably work with others too)

[thinkpadrobert]

So the X61 tablet's bios (even middleton) will not boot from the on board SD card. I use it for libreelec since kodi 19 and higher run very poorly on the x61 in windows due to aging graphics drivers. Here's how to make it happen (at least for linuxes).

Assuming you're using windows >7:
1. Download and install easybcd (https://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/ non-commerical use is free)
2. Download plopkexec (https://www.plop.at/en/plopkexec/download.html), I used plopkexec-1.6-bin.tar.gz . Extract either the 32 or 64 bit isos from the .tar.gz - I don't think it matters which, but I used the 64 bit one.
3. Add a boot menu entry for an iso file (https://neosmart.net/wiki/easybcd/porta ... so-images/) and point it at the file from step 2. EasyBCD will try to defrag the iso file before finishing up. This can take a long time. The defrag operation can be stopped in task manager or prevented thus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GiWF1gUybA
4. Reboot and choose the new easybcd iso entry from the boot menu. This will load plopkexec which should find the OS on your sdcard and boot it.