Thinkpads Forum

Hi

As part of my attempt to install coreboot on the X201 I tried to create a backup of my current BIOS, using the Raspberry Pi's SPI port. Unfortunately I mixed up some of the wires that I used to connect it to the Thinkpad's BIOS chip. As a result, the Thinkpad now appears to be extremely slow for certain operations: after pressing the power button it takes about 45 seconds before the screen turns on, selecting any menu items in the BIOS setup also takes quite a while.

I also noticed that something on the left side (probably the CPU) is getting very hot, i.e. you can feel and smell the heat. The laptop's fan quickly turns on when I press the power button, stays inactive until the boot loader shows up and then turns on at full power - it's almost as if the Thinkpad fails to notice the heat or fails to activate the fan while running the BIOS.

When the OS finally boots I get a few warnings about my CPU cores being too hot but the running system cannot seem to read any of the temperatures -- 'acpi -t' keeps saying 48 degrees C and /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal only says "temperatures: -128 0 0 0 0 0 0 0", i.e. does not appear to contain any valid values.

Now I'm wondering what I might have broken and if there is a way to fix it other than replacing the motherboard. Any hints or ideas would be appreciated.

I don't believe this - it is live but very sick:(
Now you are on the coreboot or still on Lenovo BIOS?
If you are on original BIOS - may be you need to reflash it.
If you are on coreboot - something bad with it - you must investigate it by yourself.

My hypothesis there is something bad with ACPI tables/functions in bios or may be with embedded controller firmware. I think that thinkpad don't want to control fan properly so CPU is overheating and throttling (and become slow).

PS
I am going the same way (but in the other direction;). I want to play with T6x BIOSes and remove "Lenovo" banner. But before i can start i need to backup all things that can become wrong during experimentation. I have BusPirate v3b and have successfully dumped BIOS from one old desktop mainboard. But when i have connected to T60's bios it find chip ID but can't download BIOS image in 20minutes. When i have connected to dead (water spilled) T61 mobo - it haven't find the chip ID. (May be it is Ok for T61 mobo). I have RPI for further projects may be it is time to connect it. What program have you used to work with SPI from RPI? Flashrom? What RPI image have it already?

Right now I am still using Lenovo's BIOS. Unfortunately I can't seem to find out how to re-flash the same version -- the BIOS update CD just says "An update is not necessary at this time. The process has been canceled.". Is there a way to force it to do the update anyway?

Also yes, I used flashrom with the Raspberry Pi. It was not in my Raspbian default installation, I had to compile it manually.

Unfortunately I can't seem to find out how to re-flash the same version -- the BIOS update CD just says "An update is not necessary at this time. The process has been canceled.". Is there a way to force it to do the update anyway?

First flash with an older version, the previous version is old enough, then flash with the BIOS you want to end up with.

Ah good idea and slightly embarrassing that I didn't think of it myself.

Now I've downgraded to 1.39/1.14 and re-upgraded to 1.40/1.15 but I still get the same symptoms.

Any other ideas?

cockroach wrote:but I still get the same symptoms.

Bad things
BIOS chip is connected directly to PCH by SPI bus. If BIOS is OK... so the glitch in the PCH. But i don't understand what is wrong. System (PCH) can read any byte from flash (BIOS). It do it wery slow (SPI bus work on slow speed?). CPU owerheating - fan driven by EC other than PCH.

Last thing to try - reset BIOS settings to defaults.

FryPpy wrote: Last thing to try - reset BIOS settings to defaults.

Unfortunately that didn't help.

I wonder if it's possible to replace the BIOS flash chip...

Do you have any progress with this problem? I got the same thing (about a year) after having fun with coreboot on x201s: just left the wires hanging from the chip, and they might have accidentally connected. Disassembled and pulled them apart with no luck.

Yes and no. I managed to get coreboot working but automatic fan control seems to be gone. With the coretemp driver I can however get the current CPU temperature and I could write a little script to control the fans according to that reading.

However, before I succeeded in getting help with coreboot I had already ordered a replacement motherboard which is what I am using now.

Fixed this by replacing the ME part of the firmware with the dump from another thinkpad. There it is: https://dump.bit__cheese.net/files/aweluxy/thinkpad-x201s-bios

MOD Edit: copy and paste the above link from L29Ah into your browser, but do NOT click on it yet!
You need to delete the __ between bit and cheese first, then you can click.

This is from the forum-software idiocy (NOT me), original link: https://dump.[censored].net/files/awelux ... x201s-bios