From 8df313c4d6607181576471e08d7e909c9c0f33e9 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Francis Rowe Or go back to main index
+ You still have Lenovo BIOS, or you had libreboot running and you flashed another ROM; and you had bucts 1 set and
+ the ROM wasn't dd'd.* or if Lenovo BIOS was present and libreboot wasn't flashed.
+ In this scenario, you compiled a ROM that had an incorrect configuration, or there is an actual bug preventing your machine from
+ booting. Or, maybe, you set BUC.TS to 0 and shut down after first flash while Lenovo BIOS was running. In any case, your machine is bricked and will not boot at all.
+
+ "Unbricking" means flashing a known-good (working) ROM. The problem: you can't boot the machine, making this difficult. In this situation, external hardware (see hardware requirements above) is needed which can flash the SPI chip (where libreboot resides).
+
+ Remove those screws and remove the HDD:
+ Lift off the palm rest:
+ Lift up the keyboard, pull it back a bit, flip it over like that and then disconnect it from the board:
+ Gently wedge both sides loose:
+ Remove that cable from the position:
+ Now remove that bezel. Remove wifi, nvram battery and speaker connector (also remove 56k modem, on the left of wifi):
+ Remove those screws:
+ Disconnect the power jack:
+ Remove nvram battery:
+ Disconnect cable (for 56k modem) and disconnect the other cable:
+ Disconnect speaker cable:
+ Disconnect the other end of the 56k modem cable:
+ Make sure you removed it:
+ Unscrew those:
+ Make sure you removed those:
+ Disconnect LCD cable from board:
+ Remove those screws then remove the LCD assembly:
+ Once again, make sure you removed those:
+ Remove the shielding containing the motherboard, then flip it over. Remove these screws, placing them on a steady
+ surface in the same layout as they were in before you removed them. Also, you should mark each screw hole after removing the
+ screw (a permanent marker pen will do), this is so that you have a point of reference when re-assembling the machine:
+ At this point, you should wire up your programmer according to it's documentation. For me, this was (see: "SparkFun cable pin reference"):
+ Connecting the pomona:
+ Connect programmer to 2nd computer:
+ Programmer has power:
+ Now flash the bricked machine using the 2nd computer. in my case I did:Unbricking the ThinkPad T60
+
+ Table of Contents
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+ Hardware requirements
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+ Software requirements
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+ Brick type 1: bucts not reset.
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+ In this case, unbricking is easy: reset BUC.TS to 0 by removing that yellow cmos coin (it's a battery) and putting it back after a minute or two:
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+ *Those dd commands should be applied to all newly compiled T60 ROM's (the ROM's in libreboot binary archives already have this applied!):
+ dd if=coreboot.rom of=top64k.bin bs=1 skip=$[$(stat -c %s coreboot.rom) - 0x10000] count=64k
+ dd if=coreboot.rom bs=1 skip=$[$(stat -c %s coreboot.rom) - 0x20000] count=64k | hexdump
+ dd if=top64k.bin of=coreboot.rom bs=1 seek=$[$(stat -c %s coreboot.rom) - 0x20000] count=64k conv=notrunc
+ (doing this makes the ROM suitable for use when flashing a machine that still has Lenovo BIOS running,
+ using those instructions: http://www.coreboot.org/Board:lenovo/x60/Installation.
+ (it says x60, but instructions for t60 are identical)
+ bad rom (or user error), machine won't boot
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+ http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Common_Bus_Pirate_cable_pinouts.
+ Correlating with the following information, I was able to wire up my pirate correctly:
+ http://flashrom.org/Bus_Pirate#Connections
+ And by following that advice:
+ http://www.coreboot.org/Board:lenovo/x60/Installation#Howto.
+ (it says X60 but instructions are virtually the same for the T60, with except to physical differences in how to disassemble the machine)
+ Note: that last page says to wire up only those 5 pins (see below) like that: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6.
+ Note: and then, for power it says (on that coreboot.org page) to connect the power jack to the board and connect the
+ AC adapter (without powering on the board).
+ Note: I ignored that advice, and wired up all 8 pins. And it worked.
+
+ Here is the pinout (correlate it with your programmer's documentation):
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+ flashrom -p buspirate_spi:dev=/dev/ttyUSB0 -w bin/t60/libreboot_usqwerty.rom
+ Note: there are also other ROM images for T60
+ Note: this is using buspirate as the programmer, so it is flashing the T60, not the 2nd computer!
+ Here's my terminal window on the 2nd computer (also the programmer is active):
+
+ So, you should see the following:
+ --
+
+ flashrom v0.9.5.2-r1517 on Linux 3.2.0-61-generic (i686), built with libpci 3.1.8, GCC 4.6.3, little endian
+ flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org
+
+ Calibrating delay loop... delay loop is unreliable, trying to continue OK.
+ Found Macronix flash chip "MX25L1605" (2048 kB, SPI) on buspirate_spi.
+ Reading old flash chip contents... done.
+ Erasing and writing flash chip... Erase/write done.
+ Verifying flash... VERIFIED.
+
+ --
+ At the end it says "VERIFIED", which means that the procedure worked. If you see this, it means
+ that you can put your T60 back together. So let's do that now.
+
+ Put those screws back:
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+ Put it back into lower chassis:
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+ Attach LCD and insert screws (also, attach the lcd cable to the board):
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+ Insert those screws:
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+ On the CPU (and there is another chip south-east to it, sorry forgot to take pic)
+ clean off the old thermal paste (rubbing a1ocheal (misspelling intentional. halal internet)) and apply new (Artic Silver 5 is good, others are good too)
+ you should also clean the heatsink the same way
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+ Attach the heatsink and install the screws (also, make sure to install the AC jack as highlighted):
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+ Reinstall that upper bezel:
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+ Do that:
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+ Re-attach modem, wifi, (wwan?), and all necessary cables. Sorry, forgot to take pics. Look at previous removal steps to see where they go back to. +
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+ Attach keyboard and install nvram battery:
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+ Place keyboard and (sorry, forgot to take pics) reinstall the palmrest and insert screws on the underside:
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+ It lives!
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+ Always stress test ('stress -c 2' and xsensors. below 90C is ok) when replacing cpu paste/heatsink:
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+ Copyright © 2014 Francis Rowe, All Rights Reserved.
+ See ../license.html for license conditions.
+