How To Libreboot Thinkpad w500 

The Thinkpad is a working man's machine. Long lasting, reliable, and fixable You don't see much of that anymore.

One thing about the w500 that people should know is your screws REALLY flipping matter here. Be very careful and take a million pictures as you go. Wrong screw can equal a broken screen display.

I've installed libreboot on a chromebook, and it was a far less invasive procedure. The bios write protection is enforced by a single screw, so you can remove it, disrupt the circuit, and then flash the bios from within chrome OS, from there you can reboot, and you'll be able to install an operating system of your choice from the bios screen (chrome OS won't boot from libreboot). Still quite technical, but nowhere near as absurd as this.

I shed a single tear when I remember when you could replace a cpu in your laptop. Short a period as it was.

I've been selling premodded firmware hardened ThinkPads since 2016 ( I call my line 'GhostPads'). I've modded over 200 ThinkPads with Libreboot/coreboor/osboot and have been a contractor for Minifree (the X200T that got FSF certified was one I modded). That programmer can give issues since it runs the logic at 5v even when the output voltage is set at 3v. Personally I've never had an issue (I've successfully modded maybe 60 or so with it) but some people have fried other boards with it. Just something to be aware of. I highly recomend OSboot over libreboot. It includes the microcode updates that libreboot leaves out. I also recommend the T420/520/w520/x220 with coreboot and neutralized IME for a more a more powerful firmware hardened system. One of my most popular models is the W520 GhostPad upgraded with an ivybridge quad core I7 and 32GB ram running Qubes OS. They are a beast. up to 3 drives (1 2.5" sata, 1 mSATA, 1 2.5" sata using a optical drive bay adapter. They are less labor intensive to modify as well. The flash rom is accessible by just removing the palmrest. (on T520/W520). My daily driver is a W520 w/ 3940XM, 32GB ram, 500GB msata OS drive, a 2TB 2.5" SSD and a 2TB SATA HDD running Qubes OS. I prefer this gen to the T/W*30 since they already have the better keyboard, they retain the 'ThinkLight' and they can be upgraded to the same max specs as the *30 line. If your interested in checking out my GhostPad line an ebay search for 'GhostPad' will bring up my machines. If you have any interest in one I would sell you one at my cost to support the channel. I also have Osboot roms if you'd like to try osboot on your machine and don't want to go through the hassle of building it from source. I really appreciate what you are doing here and would like to contribute to your efforts.

Hey Kenny - I make my living doing this, my company sells them librebooted. I had to watch Leah rowes video nearly 20 times to put it back together again. Glad to see there is still interest

Great job, and a cool video! Couple of notes: - spispeed - CH341A boards are limited to a specific speed (I think it's 512? I forgot) so that's why specifying it doesn't work. - CH341A boards are probably the cheapest and easiest boards to do this with but they send 5V signals on the data transfer pins, which are typically only rated for 3.3V. I've flashed a good few boards with them before I found this out, so it's *probably* not going to break your board the first time you flash it (as seen here) but it should be discouraged. You can modify them to use 3.3V on the data pins by soldering a single wire, making them still a decent choice! -MAC address - unless I missed it, you didn't flash a MAC address to the ROM! There are cases such as making an airgapped build in which it would make sense to not do this, and you can set the MAC address in software, but that's inconvenient. Documentation for this is on the libreboot website. Still a good video and sorry if that comes off as critical. You were clearly successful and that's what matters! Message me if you'd like to know about adding different payloads

This reminds me flashing custom fw on the first gen DOCSIS3 surfboard modems. Well presented.

8:20 for anybody trying to mess with BIOSes, before checking that both bios reads are the same, also check that the files you just created aren’t empty (0 bytes). now i did not do this on a think pad but i recently had to change a GPU bios, and i at first got 2 bios backups but they were empty. again, this might not apply in this case but check this anyway since it takes just a second

Gentoo + libreboot + ThinkPad = a force to be reckoned with

Kenny encouraged me to quit my NSA job.

Congrats on your 2nd channel getting 300k subs Luke!

Needs to be some kind of rental service for these parts/cables you'll only need once. Then again I guess you could just resell after you're done with it.

Libre "Little Leah" Boot I can't be the only one that remembers this, right? Kept me far far away from that project ever since.

My God was the rpi a disaster at this. Gave up and used my desktop. Thanks for this tutorial. I'm quadcore hacking my old uni W500 and going to get it to run my radiotelescope 😊

And it's done! Now I have a LibreBooted X200! On my way to install Hyperbola

I've installed Coreboot on my W520 and this was very similar. Always wanted to try it, might give it a shot now!

Nice to see a bit of HW content from my fave channel. Cheers my bro. Peace

Never gonna do this, but it's cool to watch it.

thank you for your channel. Really appreciate you taking the time to do these videos

pretty nice, congrats on 300k

These thumbnails never get better

It's not every day that I look into trying a new mod on anything I own and it turns out I already have the special tool that I need, i.e. CH341A programmer. I needed it when I whitelisted my bios on my T440P. Now you're gonna make me do this?!?! Sounds great! Can't wait!

Wouldn't it be better to run a hash check instead of diff on the roms? They are binaries.

Thanks for the video outlaw did you see that Duck Duck Go reached an agreement with Microsoft to let them put trackers in their browser? I'm always reminded of your last few previous DDG videos when I see more about the direction they're going in congrats on 300k

I can't wait for a video on the PinePhone Pro.

Thanks for the demonstration!

Congrats on the 300k subs

If you know soldering. You can always reprogram the BIOS chip to original, if something goes wrong.

Congratulations for 300k subs on your second channel Luke

Neat. I didn't know libreboot was a thing before I saw this. I know other people have mentioned the issues with the black and gold version of the CH341a where the datalines are at 5 volts instead of 3.3 volts. There is another version of the CH341a that has a built in voltage switch. If you want to see what it looks like, Adamant IT did a video about it called CH341a v1.6 Review, No More Volt Mods! - LFC#297 .

Librebooting/Corebooting non X200 GM45 Thinkpads is something I *never* want to do again. Went through a phase of Thinking it would be a fun side hustle to sell Librebooted T400 and T/W500 Thinkpads (some even with the quad mod) and I still have nightmares about it.

Congrats on 300k!

~8:20 there is a point of checking the readback's contents. if the outputs are all zeroes, diff won't lie that these readbacks are still equal.

this is so cool man, i am learning CS, how long did it take to learn so much? Thanks for the video!

This is a new level of freedom. Super impressive!

I librebooted my x200 a while before watching this so for once I actually understood a whole Mental Outlaw video

To anyone watching this thinking "man, I wish I knew what MOSI and I2C mean, or where to get Dupoint wires" then I'd strongly recommend getting a raspberry pi (or arduino). Or building a drone/rover. Drones and raspberry pis are to embedded systems what linux/pirate gaming and leetcode/scratch (the programming language) are to devops i.e. its a fun way to get started and its how a lot of people start

I've never been this early. Great content bro

People really love their Thinkpads. I've never owned one, personally.

Usually red is voltage source and black is ground

Congrats on 300k

Great video!! thank you AGAIN mental outlaw!

this is the tutorial that we've all been waiting for. is there any more knowledge you can drop on us about me_cleaner or HAP/AltMEDisable bit?

Congratulations for 300,000

I will have to install Libreboot on our worker coop server before building our cloud.

The WCH IC company are actually kinda based. They make the common CH340 and CH341 USB to serial / SPI ICs, they make the CH55_ series microcontrollers, native USB devices that could make keyboards and the joysticks and like for a lot cheaper than a mega32U4, and now why’re even making RISC-V CH32V ICs, presumably meant to be replacements for STM32s and heir knockoffs.

i have a high end W500, awesome machine and i use it pretty often to this day running windows 10.

Very nice! Will you play with a BSD distro or gnu guix?

jayson tatum teaching me to go off the grid

BASED

💯 GNU machine

For the algorithm babeh.

pretty cool video, reminds me of bisqwit's video where he did the same thing because of lenovo's bio not accepting a third party bluetooth card

best guide

thanks for the educational video, could you explain in the next video how to coreboot an X570 motherboard with a Ryzen 9 5900x?? it would be really nice to be gaming on a non-backdoored machine :) btw, are you going to expand your channel onto peertube someday?

Does libreboot disable the trusted platform module? I've always hated the idea of the TPM but I loved the high build quality of thinkpads, but obviously being business machines they all have TPM, I haven't kept up with the development of the TPM disabling tools but it'd be awesome if just flashing libreboot makes the TPM inoperable.

Thanks Kenny!

I wish I could be able to flash my x570 motherboard with Libreboot. That's the only issue I have with it. It does not support newer hardware, but that's not Libreboot. Fault It's companies not allowing it to happen.

on the back of the main programmer there's two sets of pads setup for common ICs. Using this tool myself for different chips I've found that the clip is the worst way of doing it and leads to more errors and time waste than just removing the IC and soldering it to the programmer directly, reflashing, and then soldering back to the board.

The W500's 16:10 display is very good aspect ratio for hacking or programming. Later Thinkpad use 16:9, which is not as good.

Based.

I feel like I'm watching one of Lewis's videos

Don't use diff, use cmp. The latter is for binary files. Even better is to use sha256sum and compare the hashes.

love the ar on pepes back. I just cucked out and bought x200 that was already librebooted 2 years ago.

uhh... you do know the data lines on that are pumping 5v?, and there's a big difference between NOR, NAND, and managed-NAND. If you got it working you likely got lucky. 3v3 is somewhat tolerant to 5v, but not always, and on a 1v8 chip with an adapter it will totally blow the chip.

Does display brightness work?

Why would someone choose to do this currently, especially with the limited selection of now weak hardware? What kind of safety benefits is gained by not using the proprietary bios?

never clicked faster

There should be more open source firmwares.

very cool

tip from me: if your programmer install corrupted rom, try desolder eeprom and solder to ch314a. I got that problem with Legion 5 after windows removed bios during update XD

What does Libreboot resolve? I’ve already installed Linux on a laptop and a second HD on my desktop system...

mother love me long time long time...

I have an old chrome book from when I used to work at amazon, it does not even have a bios as far as I know. Anything I can do with that?

thanks man.

why did you choose the 6year old libreboot release instead of coreboot?

It really takes all that just to flash the bios? What happened to the days of the desktop where you could flash the bios from the desktop? Or even just pop in a different chip? Or just plug in a USB, and tell the current bios to "update" from that? You know, the way normal things flash the bios. Where you don't have to jump through a million hoops.

Where the heck are the power jump pins? I have an old w500 without a keyboard and have no clue how to boot it to test things.

I already looked in many forums and documentation, and I didn't find if coreboot or libreboot can be installed outside that list of supported devices, I know it seems obvious. my computer is an ideapad 310, would it be possible?

Unfortunately I have an R61 which isn't supported by libreboot. Otherwise I would totally do this!

Is there anyway to libreboot or coreboot (unsure of the difference in those terms) an older desktop? I have an old one with an FX-6300 gathering dust. I would like to refurbish it with an AMD card (I havea Nvidia GTX750ti in it right now) and run Artix on it (I'm not sure if I might mess up Gentoo on it due to the peculiarities of the FX6300's core count, possessing 6 ALUs and 3 control units [or maybe it's the other way around, idk]). Obviously there would be no point to using such an old desktop other than because it has no AMD PSP, so having the BIOS not glow in the dark is a must as well, in addition to the closed-source drivers for Nvidia needing to go.

You think you can do one for the early model MacBook? I happen to find one at a yard sale for literally 10 dollars, I need to get a charger and a new battery for it

Reducing cable length can improve your success rates. Pesky speed of light.

Cool, is it possible to flash on a Dell inspiring 5575?

Can i use DIY programmer? Using Arduino make a serprog programmer.

Based

is this better than a x200? could you do a libreboot of that?

Like No. 600 :)

What if there's no logo or company name on the IC chip?

was wondering what will be the best modern laptop for libreboot. w500 has quite old hardware

lets goo

is there "how to libreboot $whatever legacy bios laptop" guide? at least at the state "how to split bios dump into loadable modules and rebuild the bios rom image with libreboot"

I got an X260 on ebay for a decent price, however I noticed that the bios is password protected and the seller doesn't know the password. Would installling libreboot remove the password lock as well? Would I have any problems, like idk the chip refusing to read or write because of the password?

Why does flashing the wrong binary brick the ROM chip? The flashing is done externally, so if you mess up, can't you just try again?

Wtf is this? Should I customize bios for normal workstation mainboard? Or it should be replaced to Megatrends bios on server mainboards only?

Kenny do you say the n word often

nice!

GNU Guix review when

Woo woo