Thinkpads Forum

My x60s was bricked while updating the bios. I have a backup of the original ROM.
What are the options for flashing the backup to the macronix bios chip?

When I press the power button one led comes on and, sometimes the fan spins but otherwise, nothing else happens.
But, for a few starts after the flash, I heard a beep sequence of long-short-short.

I don't have a windows machine.

You could try re-seating the CMOS battery, but I doubt that would have any effect. Other than extracting the BIOS chip and reprogramming it, you need a new system board.

Not sure about ThinkPads but I know with other brands of computers there is usually a recovery procedure involving the use of a floppy disk.

Have a look around on Google.

brchan wrote:You could try re-seating the CMOS battery, but I doubt that would have any effect. Other than extracting the BIOS chip and reprogramming it, you need a new system board.

Reseating CMOS didn't help - after reseating battery I no longer hear a long-short-short beep code.

I forgot to mention, libreboot has been flashed to the chip. Libreboot flashing is a two step process - first flash, second flash. I did the first flash. Rebooted, no problem. Did second flash and machine wouldn't restart.

Reprogram the chip is the libreboot suggestion (https://libreboot.org/docs/install/x60_unbrick.html) but their pin out documentation isn't clear.

I've got an Arduino UNO on hand and it seems I can get a clip to attach to the chip (with the plan to reprogram without removing chip from board).

These seem relevant but I don't understand what 'MOSI_L' means. MOSI is master out, slave in.
What is MOSI_L?

https://www.flashrom.org/Serprog/Arduino_flasher
https://www.flashrom.org/Serprog#Arduin ... _by_GNUtoo
http://dev.hackaday.com/?p=73430

My x60 has a T7200 64 bit processor, however the MB chipset is 32 bit. We flashed the BIOS per the instructions https://libreboot.org/docs/install/inde ... lenovobios. This was a software flash method. The link has some strategies for a bricked scenario. Let me know how you progress.

As per picture in Part 3 https://www.flashrom.org/File:P3v1_dil8_so8_spi.png
Signal name _L means lowered to 3.3V