Board:lenovo/x230

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The wiki is being retired!

Documentation is now handled by the same processes we use for code: Add something to the Documentation/ directory in the coreboot repo, and it will be rendered to https://doc.coreboot.org/. Contributions welcome!

Status

Thanks for your interest in Lenovo X230 port. Issues:

  • no MRC cache (longer boot time)
  • yellow USB port isn't powered in power-off state.
  • Badly seated RAM may prevent booting (not really a problem but coreboot is more suspicious to this than vendor BIOS)

Tested:

  • S3 (Suspend to RAM)
  • RAM module combinations of 8G+8G, 8G+0, 0+8G, 4G+8G, 8G+4G, 8G+1G, 1G+0, 0+1G, 4G+0, 0+4G
  • USB (both 2.0 and 3.0 ports)
  • Video (both internal and VGA)
  • Expresscard slot (including hotplugging)
  • Sound (integrated speakers, integrated mic, external headphones, external mic)
  • LAN
  • mini-PCIe slots (both wlan and wwan)
  • Linux (through GRUB-as-payload)
  • Windows (through GRUB-as-payload loading SeaBIOS image from disk; you have to use extracted VGA blob, dumped from memory isn't good enough)
  • SD card slot
  • Thermal management
  • Fingerprint reader.
  • Webcam
  • trackpoint
  • touchpad
  • Fn hotkeys
  • Keyboard backlight
  • Thinklight.
  • bluetooth
  • dock
  • msata (fixed in commit c8f54a1109072706e2fa091dc9ab4ad3eb057b42)
  • mini displayport

Not tested:

  • digitizer on x230t variant (may need work, if you have x230t and install coreboot on it please contact us)

proprietary components status

  • CPU Microcode
  • VGA option rom (optional): you need it if you wantgraphics in SeaBIOS but most payloads should work without it (text mode or corebootfb mode)
  • ME(Management Engine) => you do not have to touch it(just leave it where it is)
  • EC(Embedded Controller) => you do not have to touch it(just leave it where it is)

Code

{{ #if: | * [{{{review_url}}} The code has been merged into coreboot master]: | * The code has been merged into coreboot master:}}

 $ git clone https://review.coreboot.org/coreboot.git


Flashing

X230 has 2 flash chips of 8M and 4M. They're concatenated to one virtual flash chip of 12M which is itself subdivided in roughly in 3 parts:

  • Descriptor (12K)
  • ME firmware (5M-12K)
  • System flash (7M)

ME firmware is not readable. Vendor firmware locks the flash and so you need to flash externally (unless until someone figures out a way around it).

Proceeds as follows:

  • Turn off your laptop, remove battery and AC adapter.
  • Remove the keyboard.
  • Connect your external SPI flasher to the top SPI chip which is under palm resting space, on left side of the board. It's a 4M chip. IF you've chosen CBFS_SIZE 4M or smaller that' the only chip you need to reflash.

I recommend using SOIC clip. Depending on the flasher you use, you may have to use separate 3.3V source. Make sure not to feed more than 3.3V ot the chip. I used buspirate as flasher and 3.3V power lines from another computer.

  • Read the flash. Twice. Compare the files to be sure. Save a copy of it on

external media.

flashrom -p <yourprogrammer> -r flash.bin
flashrom -p <yourprogrammer> -r flash2.bin
diff flash.bin flash2.bin

If they don't match, do not proceed. If the file is 8M, you're flashing wrong chip, connec to the right one.

  • Write the flash. Since you have to write only top 4M, first split out those 4M:
 dd of=top.rom bs=1M if=build/coreboot.rom skip=8
  • Use flashrom to flash top.rom.

If you have trouble reading the chip successfully, the most common problems are

  • insufficient power supply
  • bad contacts
  • too long wires
  • bad pinout

The cable shipped with buspirate was too long, and needed to be trimmed.

See also In-System Programming