Thinkpads Forum

Hello everybody i have decided to install libreboot to t400 and i have been kind of successfull, however after installing libreboot succesfully to my t400 i tried modding it further. Since i had installed libreboot i thought i could put a q9000 in there. I saw these kind of things happen at this forum for t61 and t60 however nobody is showing any love for the t400. When i put the cpu in and booted the computer the screen didnt turn on at all, however the lights were turning on as if it was running normally. I got my old cpu and put it back inside and everything booted normally and i got to see the libreboot grub.
I thought everything i had to do was flash a bios that didnt had a whitelist for cpu's but i guess i was wrong. If anyone encountered anything similar with libreboot or core 2 quad cpu's in general please let me know, i went through an intensive troubleshooting phase but no avail

If you scour the T61 quad-core thread you will find that it has been tried in a T400 and T500. However, the way to get it to work in the T61 is currently not possible in the T400 or T500, and may not ever be.

Qing Dao wrote:If you scour the T61 quad-core thread you will find that it has been tried in a T400 and T500. However, the way to get it to work in the T61 is currently not possible in the T400 or T500, and may not ever be.

I know, however the challenge in that mod was to make t61 accept a 1066 fsb cpu. The t400 already accepts those and should be able to run the chip with no problems. I was thinking that my problems emerged from the screen, since i had to wait 7 hours because the system drew too much power and overcharged the capacitors.
at this point im thinking of just buying a t61 or t60 and use my q9000 on that since there is documentation available.
By the way the cpu is a Engineering Sample (ES)

uzayonat wrote: I know, however the challenge in that mod was to make t61 accept a 1066 fsb cpu. The t400 already accepts those and should be able to run the chip with no problems.
...
at this point im thinking of just buying a t61 or t60 and use my q9000 on that since there is documentation available.
By the way the cpu is a Engineering Sample (ES)

The challenge was to run QC cpu (when 1066 fsb was already done) and it had some troubles with BIOS (acpi tables and microcode) but this was in normal (not coreboot) BIOS.
You can read that some HW mod to CPU and mainboard is needed for QC cpu too.
I have tried QC in W500 and the same thing. Even i haven't launch it in single core mode. If i remember correct in single core mode QC can be launched on T500 (but useless?)

WARNING - DO NOT BUY T60 for QC mod - T60 can't work even with 800MHz CPUs. Sometimes we build T61 in T60 body (FrankenPads) but it is T61, and mod them further. So you need T61!

El-sahef installed a Q9000 in a T500:
https://thinkpad-forum.de/threads/19912 ... utzen-BETA

He says the same solution can be done with a T400. I ordered a processor to test this.

I imagine there will be serious cooling issues with this quad. But I would buy one. Understandable is that after this mod you will not be able to run OEM CPU.
Did he get it right with Coreboot? My german translation is horrible

CASPER wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 12, 2017 4:38 am

I imagine there will be serious cooling issues with this quad. But I would buy one. Understandable is that after this mod you will not be able to run OEM CPU.
Did he get it right with Coreboot? My german translation is horrible ;)

Yes, El-sahef, king of hardware modifications, got a T500 to run with a quad-core Q9000. It ran in Linux and Windows, though there were minor problems in windows (resume from suspend didn't work).

You could run the OEM cpu if you remove the soldered wire.

That`s interesting, I didn`t think it is reversable. Nice surprise. Wondering why resume from suspend don`t work? Is this something with bridge support for qc?