Thinkpads Forum

NEED HELP - -

I installed a i7 2640m in the T420. It would not boot. I thought at first it may have failed because some cpu paste got on the socket and new cpu. I cleaned them both up and tried again. The T420 would not boot. The power went on - but nothing wrote to the screen. I reinstalled the i5 2520m, and the T420 booted up normally. What gives?

CORRECTION: THIS IS A i7 3540M. MAYBE NOT COMPATIBLE?

Do I need to update bios for the chip to work? I am running bios version 1.52 right now. I'd appreciate any help on this.

Thanks!

- w

(sorry that this might be a dup question)

You need a modded BIOS for this type of an upgrade AFAIK.

My mistake. The new chip was i7 3540M . Maybe not compatible? - b

WoodyinMN wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 27, 2021 12:34 pm

My mistake. The new chip was i7 3540M . Maybe not compatible? - b

Correct. Not compatible.

Thanks. Yeh. I messed up. Seeing if I can return the 3540m. Dang.

All,

Just an update that the install of the i7 2640M happend last weekend. I did not need to update the bios. Linux showed it correctly when I booted. In windows10 I needed to remove the driver in device manger and reboot for Windows to display it correctly as i7 2640M. It is a faster CPU, at least for me it was worth the swap.

Thanks,

- w

WoodyinMN wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 10, 2021 8:32 pm

Just an update that the install of the i7 2640M happend last weekend. I did not need to update the bios. Linux showed it correctly when I booted. In windows10 I needed to remove the driver in device manger and reboot for Windows to display it correctly as i7 2640M. It is a faster CPU, at least for me it was worth the swap.

In Windows 8+ whenever you upgrade the CPU you need a full reboot for it to be picked up correctly.
Also, keep in mind that there is also a finite number of CPU swaps you can do before you are forced to reactivate Windows with another license in Windows 10.
AFAIK the i7-2640M is good for single core/thread performance, but multicore workload it's quite a bit behind the quad cores, but then its TDP is also quite a bit less than those too, and the ones with discrete graphics can quite easily thermal throttle with a quad core.

Hello,

I also upgraded my T420 with the 2640M, I'm using it to write this very message. I'm very pleased with it. No real problem for multitasking. I use my machine for internet surf, desktop softwares, multimedia and even old games (WoW Vanilla and Quake III mostly) and it never showed weakness. With its SSD (120GB Kingston mSATA) and 16GB of RAM, everything is smooth.

No BIOS upgrade needed for the 2640M, it's a Sandy Bridge CPU. The T420 can accept the Ivy Bridge (the generation after Sandy Bridge), but here, a new BIOS is required (Coreboot).



W.

Coreboot has its own can of worms that OP may not be willing to deal with.

Hello,

Yes, I agree, it's not for everyone. I would do it if I had a second T420, just to see how it is done, but I'm more than happy with my laptop as it is at this time, so I won't change whatsoever on it. I juste wanted to give the information for WoodyinMN but that's not a recommendation.

Have a good day !

W.

Considering it's confirmed that you can run an Ivy Bridge CPU on a T420 with Coreboot, has someone attempted to mod the regular Lenovo BIOS to do the same?

Maybe it's just a matter of replacing the Microcode and VGA BIOS blobs, update or remove the CPU whitelist and re-package/sign it.

WoodyinMN wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 27, 2021 2:59 pm

Thanks. Yeh. I messed up. Seeing if I can return the 3540m. Dang.

How much did you paid for it?

mikemex wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 21, 2021 1:14 am

Considering it's confirmed that you can run an Ivy Bridge CPU on a T420 with Coreboot, has someone attempted to mod the regular Lenovo BIOS to do the same?

Maybe it's just a matter of replacing the Microcode and VGA BIOS blobs, update or remove the CPU whitelist and re-package/sign it.

From what I've read, Intel put some kind of protection/validaton (crypto signing) on the microcode blobs, making it impossible to modify them.

axur-delmeria wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 21, 2021 3:55 am

From what I've read, Intel put some kind of protection/validaton (crypto signing) on the microcode blobs, making it impossible to modify them.

Right, but in this case the question is just about taking a properly signed microcode blob from a different BIOS, so it doesn't look like it's impossible?

I was very interested at some point in getting a non-Coreboot e.g. "native" Ivy Bridge enabled BIOS for T520 integrated graphics.
It is possible that there are people on this planet who can do it.
Me?.. Well in the end I gave up and purchased a T530 mobo

For some reason I thought Oleh who's email is mandriva64 on the world's most popular email service might be able to do it..
But it wouldn't be free I guess It would cost money. Still if the money is paid once and the BIOS can be re-used..
Well in the end I never tried asking him. But if you do ask can you share what response you get?

atagunov wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 21, 2021 8:02 am

Right, but in this case the question is just about taking a properly signed microcode blob from a different BIOS, so it doesn't look like it's impossible?

IMO if someone was able to, it would've been done by now.

axur-delmeria wrote: ↑

Sun Aug 22, 2021 3:07 am

IMO if someone was able to, it would've been done by now.

Heh my curiosity got a bit fired up so I went ahead and sent and email to that address that Oleh was previously using. I just asked about theoretical possibility for now
T530 BIOS can support either Ivy or Sandy Bridge integrated VGA, so it probably has some logic for selecting one. T520 doesn't need that. This is what makes me a little hesitant..

atagunov wrote: ↑

Sun Aug 22, 2021 7:02 am

axur-delmeria wrote: ↑

Sun Aug 22, 2021 3:07 am

IMO if someone was able to, it would've been done by now.

Heh my curiosity got a bit fired up so I went ahead and sent and email to that address that Oleh was previously using. I just asked about theoretical possibility for now
T530 BIOS can support either Ivy or Sandy Bridge integrated VGA, so it probably has some logic for selecting one. T520 doesn't need that. This is what makes me a little hesitant..

There is always hope; a device is truly dead only when it's abandoned by its users. 1vyrain was released many years after the initial release of the xx30 series, for example.

There are certainly far more resources now than there were when such machines were released. First, they've become quite cheap by now, so you don't really fear bricking one as much as you used to. Second, since they've been modified with Coreboot already, recovering from a failure is easier than ever. Third, success is warranted if we have the persistence to archive it; it's no longer a question IF a Sandy Bridge machine will run using an Ivy Bridge CPU but rather HOW do we manage to port and package the necessary resources to do that.

mikemex wrote: ↑

Sun Aug 22, 2021 3:08 pm

a device is truly dead only when it's abandoned by its users

Oh, but *20 series is far from dead, quite a good number of people - including me right now - are running it with Sandy Bridge CPU-s

So it seems that video bios is far bigger problem here than just microcodes if we want to plant an Ivy Bridge CPU into an *20 system without Coreboot.
When I was researching this for T520 I made some notes, here's one link of interest I came across:

https://www.bios-mods.com/forum/archive ... 352-3.html

At the bottom of that page we have

For the uefi boot mode, DXE core loads GOP policy driver, then it locates and loads video bios table into memory, then gop driver start with those settings.
So I started to look in bios for the policy module, looking specifically for the $vbt string, and that's what I've found:
In t420 (SNB) sainitdxe module has one $vbt reference, in t430 (SNB & IVB compatible) two, also t430 has just before ivbgop and snbgop modules, two very similar modules with the $vbt string and that differs for chipset code (18-snb, 20-ivb).

...and I don't really know what is being talked about here. So all in all this doesn't seem trivial. Apparently all names are "modules" in UEFI BIOS. SNB and IVB are acronyms for Sandy and Ivy Bridges. BTW that thread on bios-mods references https://thinkpad-forum.de/threads/20222 ... port/page3 and there at the end you will see my message, that was as far as I got when pondering about it the last time.. The general idea was to copy SainitDxe and possibly ivbgop and snbgop from *30 BIOS to *20 BIOS.

On the other hand you can look for last message from charlotteplusplus on that forum.. It seems one problem with such copying is lack of space in that EEPROM which can possibly be overcome by using a trimmed down Intel ME. Well the level of complexity is not trivial at all. I figured I might shell out some $$ for this being done but it was not worth it for me personally to invest time in getting proficient with the tools. It still looks like this is within the realm of possible but learning the tools just to do this.. okay probably too much for me. Won't be doing it myself.

Has anyone got the vbios/gop driver working for tianocore?