Bought some T30s, need BIOS updates

[cadillacmike68]

Hi,

I just bought a bunch (5) T30s off feebay. There were 5 listed, i put bids on all five and no-one outbid me?!? They were all advertised as working fine no HDDs or HDD caddy & cover (I have extras at home). While i thought they were all listed as identical, when i re-checked two were listed as having 512MB and three were listed with 256MB.

BIOS dates are all over the place, so i need the T30 BIOS and embedded controller, and lenovo.com is hot helping here. anyone have the diskette version or a good link (or file) to the non-diskette update? Thanks in advance.

They all arrived. They look decent, even good, except for one with a missing PCMICA slot cover and another with a bad cover latch (still works, only a bit loose - figures these issues are on the good ones!). Screens were all clean. 1 has a XPP COA the others have XPH. Basically the same machine type / model from a lookup. All 1.9GHz with the wireless wires in place (and of course will need the Intel wireless firmware update which i have for my two intel wireless mini cards). All with non-dead bateries - no idea how much life, but they all go green after a couple hours, and they all came with a plain DVD and the ibm T30 AC adapter. I think i am up to a dozen Ultrabay 2000 DVDs now!

The two 512MB ones have 2 256MB modules each.

Two of the 256 MB listees have 2 256MB Moduels as well - bad outer memory slot on both!

The third one lsited as 256MB had a single 256MB module and both slots were good. So i have 3 good ones and 2 needing the flow job. All the memory is Kingston or IBM FRU stickered.

[rkawakami]

Ah, I see what you mean by the Support page dumping you back to the main page. It seems the URL is not constructed correctly.

I used the MIGR number that is in the current T30 link (MIGR-42694) and plugged it into my shortcut:

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloa ... MIGR-42694

This leads you to the page for the non-diskette update, which I don't recommend even if you have a working OS on the hard drive. There are links to the diskette version for both the BIOS and Embedded Controller but they are also not working. A little poking around shows this as the README file for the T30 BIOS Revision 2.10 (1IET71WW):

http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc ... uj13ud.txt

In order to download the executable file, simply change the ".txt" to ".exe", thus this should be the link:

http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc ... uj13ud.exe

The Embedded Controller README file for T30 diskette version EC Revision 1.07 (1IHT20WW) is here:

http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc ... hj08ud.txt

The executable is here:

http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc ... hj08ud.exe

Edit: 9/3/2011 Corrected EC links

[cadillacmike68]

Thaks Ray!

I prefer the diskette versions as well; more foolproof and portable. I'll try this out when i finally get home tonite - this friggin army machine has so much security restrictions, i can't even get to a page when i DO have the proper URL.

I "won" the 5 T22s i was bidding on, so i'll have to find that page as well, but i think that one worked.

Then probably 2 pairs of matching 256MB modules for the T22s - this is getting hard to find.

I think i'm set on HDD covers, caddies and HDDs themselves... And I'm pushing 20 on the ultrabay 2000 DVD drives now.

[RealBlackStuff]

You should bookmark this driver-matrix page: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail. ... PAD-MATRIX

[cadillacmike68]

Thanks Ray and RBS. I had all these pages bookmarked when it was 307-ibm.com ( I used to work for IBM as well), but after the recent lenovo.com migration, nothing is working correctly for me.

I got the diskette BIOS and EC disk images for T21, 22, 23 and 30. (since I'm now the owner of a T23 as well).

I'm going to put in a WTB for 4 matched T22 256MB modules, preferably Kingston. It looks like Kingston removed these from their lineup. I need to dig out the old LTM part #s first. And possibly for 2 T23 512 MBs.

[RealBlackStuff]

Make sure you get LOW-density PC100 SDRAM Sodimms for the T20/T21/T22.
T23 takes PC133, either low- or hi-density.

[cadillacmike68]

Thanks for the reminder. I have some Kingstons in my T22 that I've had for years (KTM-TP390X/256). I'll search for some of those.

[cadillacmike68]

Hi again, the embedded controller update is the non-diskette version and of course the link to the diskette version is broken. I don't know how you figured out the BIOS update link, but think you could find the diskette EC link?? Thanks.

[rkawakami]

So sorry... I thought I had the right file. The difference between the two appears to be in the last letter of the filename: "s" for Windows-based update and "d" for diskette-based. The README file is here:

http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc ... hj08ud.txt

which makes the executable file here:

http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc ... hj08ud.exe

I've corrected my previous post. As to how to find these filenames, I basically use a Google search and look for them. In this case I used:

1IHT20WW t30 embedded controller program service diskette

That usually finds the README file. From there just replace the ".txt" with ".exe". In my haste to post the earlier information, I didn't read the README file .

And finally, FWIW, I submitted a report about the broken links via the Lenovo "Send Us Feedback" system.

[cadillacmike68]

Ray, you are a genius - Thanks!

I submitted some broken link reports too.
I did my T21 and T22, one T30 was already at latest revs, I'll do my primary machine tomorrow. the rest are on still inbound or in Orlando (plus there's the 2GHz T30 that i can't get a screen on.....)