Libreboot documentation: Unbricking the ThinkPad T60

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## Table of Contents

- Hardware Requirements
- Software Requirements
- Types of brick:
  - Brick type 1: bucts not reset
  - Brick type 2: bad rom (or user error), machine won't boot

# Hardware requirements

- a 2nd computer (maybe another T60. any computer will do)
- external flashrom-compatible programmer (I'm using the "bus pirate")
- SOIC-8 IC clip (I'm using the Pomona 5250)
- Cable (programmer<>clip) - mine came with the bus pirate.
- USB mini a to b cable (for buspirate<>computer connection).
- rubbing a***hol (misspelling intentional. halal internet) and thermal compound for changing CPU heatsink (procedure involves removing heatsink)

# Software requirements

- GNU/Linux (on the 2nd computer)
- flashrom software (on the 2nd computer): http://flashrom.org/

# Brick type 1: bucts not reset.

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 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:
*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

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"):
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):

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:
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:

Put it back into lower chassis:

Attach LCD and insert screws (also, attach the lcd cable to the board):

Insert those screws:

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

Attach the heatsink and install the screws (also, make sure to install the AC jack as highlighted):

Reinstall that upper bezel:

Do that:

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.

Attach keyboard and install nvram battery:

Place keyboard and (sorry, forgot to take pics) reinstall the palmrest and insert screws on the underside:

It lives!

Always stress test ('stress -c 2' and xsensors. below 90C is ok) when replacing cpu paste/heatsink:

Copyright © 2014 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.