BIOS Bricked x60s L7400 - recovery options?

X60/X61 series specific matters only.
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jaspen-meyer
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BIOS Bricked x60s L7400 - recovery options?

#1 Post by jaspen-meyer » Fri Jul 01, 2016 12:39 pm

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.
T420 Ivy Bridge i7 3612QM, x24 xiphmont led, x60s libreboot, led, T400 libreboot, (in progress testing Q9100)

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Re: BIOS Bricked x60s L7400 - recovery options?

#2 Post by brchan » Fri Jul 01, 2016 3:15 pm

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.
Current Thinkpads: W530 (functional classic keyboard mod), X301, T61, T60, T43, T23, 600X, 770
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Re: BIOS Bricked x60s L7400 - recovery options?

#3 Post by MrMaguire » Fri Jul 01, 2016 5:02 pm

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.

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Re: BIOS Bricked x60s L7400 - recovery options?

#4 Post by jaspen-meyer » Sat Jul 02, 2016 1:06 pm

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
T420 Ivy Bridge i7 3612QM, x24 xiphmont led, x60s libreboot, led, T400 libreboot, (in progress testing Q9100)

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Re: BIOS Bricked x60s L7400 - recovery options?

#5 Post by tagumcity » Sun Jul 17, 2016 9:53 pm

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.
x60 (T7200), 3.2GB ram & X200s (L9400), 8GB ram both have a 256GB EVO drive with bios flashed to Libreboot & running Parabola GNU/Linux

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Re: BIOS Bricked x60s L7400 - recovery options?

#6 Post by RealBlackStuff » Mon Jul 18, 2016 5:33 am

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