ThinkPad T500

It is believed that all or most T500 laptops are compatible. See notes about CPU compatibility and switchable graphics for potential incompatibilities.

There are two possible flash chip sizes for the T500: 4MiB (32Mbit) or 8MiB (64Mbit). This can be identified by the type of flash chip below the palmrest: 4MiB is SOIC-8, 8MiB is SOIC-16.

The T500 laptops come with the ME (and sometimes AMT in addition) before flashing libreboot. Libreboot disables and removes it by using a modified descriptor: see gm45_remove_me.html (contains notes, plus instructions)

Flashing instructions can be found at ../install/index.html#flashrom

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The T500 is almost identical to the X200, code-wise. See x200.html.

Descriptor and Gbe differences

See ../future/dumps/t500_x200_descriptor/descriptor_diff_t500_x200.txt and ../future/dumps/t500_x200_descriptor/gbe_diff_t500_x200.txt

The patches above are based on the output from ich9deblob on a factory.rom image dumped from the T500 with a SOIC-8 4MiB flash chip. The patch re-creates the X200 descriptor/gbe source, so the commands were something like:
$ diff -u t500gbe x200gbe
$ diff -u t500descriptor x200descriptor

ME VSCC table is in a different place and a different size on the T500. Libreboot disables and removes the ME anyway, so it doesn't matter.

The very same descriptor/gbe used on the X200 (generated by ich9gen) was re-used on the T500, and it still worked.

Hardware register dumps

The coreboot wiki shows how to collect various logs useful in porting to new boards. Following are outputs from the T500:

• T500 with Macronix MX25L3205D flash chip (4MiB, SOIC-8) and Lenovo BIOS 3.13 7VET83WW (EC firmware 1.06):
  • lspci output
  • lsusb output
  • lspnp output
  • superiotool output
  • inteltool output
  • ectool output
  • msrtool output
  • dmidecode output
  • biosdecode output
  • nvramtool output
  • dmesg
  • from stock firmware - flashrom probe output,
  • from stock firmware - flashrom read (failed): output,
  • from stock firmware - flashrom write (failed): flashrom_write.log
  • /sys/class/sound/card0/hwC0D0/init_pin_configs
  • /proc/asound/card0/codec#0
  • /proc/cpuinfo

This one had a screen (1920x1200) that is currently incompatible. Working to fix it. EDID:

user@user-ThinkPad-T500:~/Desktop$ sudo i2cdump -y 2 0x50
No size specified (using byte-data access)
     0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  a  b  c  d  e  f    0123456789abcdef
00: XX ff ff ff ff ff ff 00 30 ae 55 40 00 00 00 00    X.......0?U@....
10: 00 11 01 03 80 21 15 78 ea ba 70 98 59 52 8c 28    .????!?x??p?YR?(
20: 25 50 54 00 00 00 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01    %PT...??????????
30: 01 01 01 01 01 01 e7 3a 80 8c 70 b0 14 40 1e 50    ???????:??p??@?P
40: 24 00 4b cf 10 00 00 19 16 31 80 8c 70 b0 14 40    $.K??..??1??p??@
50: 1e 50 24 00 4b cf 10 00 00 19 00 00 00 0f 00 d1    ?P$.K??..?...?.?
60: 0a 32 d1 0a 28 11 01 00 32 0c 00 00 00 00 00 fe    ?2??(??.2?.....?
70: 00 4c 50 31 35 34 57 55 31 2d 54 4c 42 31 00 9a    .LP154WU1-TLB1.?
80: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff    ................
90: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff    ................
a0: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff    ................
b0: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff    ................
c0: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff    ................
d0: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff    ................
e0: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff    ................
f0: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff    ................

Copyright © 2015 Francis Rowe <info@gluglug.org.uk>
This document is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License and all future versions. A copy of the license can be found at ../license.txt.

This document is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See ../license.txt for more information.