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Lenovo X200 / T400 / T500 / X301 common

These models are sold with either 8 MiB or 4 MiB flash chip. You can identify the chip in your machine through flashrom:

# flashrom -p internal

Note that this does not allow you to determine whether the chip is in a SOIC-8 or a SOIC-16 package.

Installing without ME firmware

.. Note::
   **ThinkPad R500** has slightly different flash layout (it doesn't have
   ``gbe`` region), so the process would be a little different for that model.

On Montevina machines it's possible to disable ME and remove its firmware from SPI flash by modifying the flash descriptor. This also makes it possible to use the flash region the ME used for bios region, allowing for much larger payloads.

First of all create a backup of your ROM with an external programmer:

# flashrom -p YOUR_PROGRAMMER -r backup.rom

Then, split the IFD regions into separate files with ifdtool. You will need flashregion_3_gbe.bin later.

$ ifdtool -x backup.rom

Now you need to patch the flash descriptor. You can either modify the one from your backup with ifdtool, or generate a completely new one with bincfg.

Modifying flash descriptor using ifdtool

Pick the layout according to your chip size from the table below and save it to the new_layout.txt file:

+---------------------------+---------------------------+---------------------------+
| 4 MB chip                 | 8 MB chip                 | 16 MB chip                |
+===========================+===========================+===========================+
| .. code-block:: none      | .. code-block:: none      | .. code-block:: none      |
|                           |                           |                           |
|    00000000:00000fff fd   |    00000000:00000fff fd   |    00000000:00000fff fd   |
|    00001000:00002fff gbe  |    00001000:00002fff gbe  |    00001000:00002fff gbe  |
|    00003000:003fffff bios |    00003000:007fffff bios |    00003000:01ffffff bios |
|    00fff000:00000fff pd   |    00fff000:00000fff pd   |    00fff000:00000fff pd   |
|    00fff000:00000fff me   |    00fff000:00000fff me   |    00fff000:00000fff me   |
+---------------------------+---------------------------+---------------------------+

The last two lines define pd and me regions of negative size. This way ifdtool will mark those as unused.

Update regions in the flash descrpitor (it was extracted previously with ifdtool -x):

$ ifdtool -n new_layout.txt flashregion_0_flashdescriptor.bin

Set MeDisable bit in ICH0 and MCH0 straps:

$ ifdtool -M 1 flashregion_0_flashdescriptor.bin.new

Delete previous descriptors and rename the final one:

$ rm flashregion_0_flashdescriptor.bin
$ rm flashregion_0_flashdescriptor.bin.new
$ mv flashregion_0_flashdescriptor.bin.new.new flashregion_0_flashdescriptor.bin

Continue to the Configuring coreboot section.

Creating a new flash descriptor using bincfg

There is a tool to generate a modified flash descriptor called bincfg. Go to util/bincfg and build it:

$ cd util/bincfg
$ make

If your flash is not 8 MB, you need to change values of flcomp_density1 and flreg1_limit in the ifd-x200.set file according to following table:

+-----------------+-------+-------+--------+
|                 | 4 MB  | 8 MB  | 16 MB  |
+=================+=======+=======+========+
| flcomp_density1 | 0x3   | 0x4   | 0x5    |
+-----------------+-------+-------+--------+
| flreg1_limit    | 0x3ff | 0x7ff | 0x1fff |
+-----------------+-------+-------+--------+

Then create the flash descriptor:

$ ./bincfg ifd-x200.spec ifd-x200.set ifd.bin

Configuring coreboot

Now configure coreboot. You need to select correct chip size and specify paths to flash descriptor and gbe dump.

Mainboard --->
    ROM chip size (8192 KB (8 MB)) # According to your chip
    (0x7fd000) Size of CBFS filesystem in ROM # or 0x3fd000 for 4 MB chip / 0x1ffd000 for 16 MB chip

Chipset --->
    [*] Add Intel descriptor.bin file
    # Note: if you used bincfg, specify path to generated util/bincfg/ifd.bin
    (/path/to/flashregion_0_flashdescriptor.bin) Path and filename of the descriptor.bin file

    [*] Add gigabit ethernet configuration
    (/path/to/flashregion_3_gbe.bin) Path to gigabit ethernet configuration

Then build coreboot and flash whole build/coreboot.rom to the chip.

Installing with ME firmware

To install coreboot and keep ME working, you don't need to do anything special with the flash descriptor. Just flash only bios externally and don't touch any other regions:

# flashrom -p YOUR_PROGRAMMER -w coreboot.rom --ifd -i bios

Flash layout

The flash layouts of the OEM firmware are as follows:

+---------------------------------+---------------------------------+
| 4 MB chip                       | 8 MB chip                       |
+=================================+=================================+
| .. code-block:: none            | .. code-block:: none            |
|                                 |                                 |
|    00000000:00000fff fd         |    00000000:00000fff fd         |
|    00001000:001f5fff me         |    00001000:005f5fff me         |
|    001f6000:001f7fff gbe        |    005f6000:005f7fff gbe        |
|    001f8000:001fffff pd         |    005f8000:005fffff pd         |
|    00200000:003fffff bios       |    00600000:007fffff bios       |
|    00290000:002affff ec         |    00690000:006affff ec         |
|    003e0000:003fffff bootblock  |    007e0000:007fffff bootblock  |
+---------------------------------+---------------------------------+

On each boot of vendor BIOS ec area in flash is checked for having firmware there, and if there is one, it proceedes to update firmware on H8S/2116 (when both external power and main battery are attached). Once update is performed, first 64 KB of ec area is erased. Visit thinkpad-ec repository to learn more about how to extract EC firmware from vendor updates.

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