Many modern non-touch screen laptops are so much easier to work on than these C2D monstrosities. Thinkpads are pretty reliable though, I’ve seen these things sit out in the rain and power on the next day.
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 did chromebook repair as a class in my senior year of HS, alongside some tinkering with chromebooks I got cheap off ebay. They're actually fairly simple to mess with as long as they aren't locked to an organization like a school device would be. Since we'd have to replace tons of motherboards (Lenovo cannot design a good motherboard to save their life) I got quite used to messing with the write protection and flashing serial numbers and all that. Ended up being one of the main people in my class for it since I'm experience with a terminal and behind the facade, ChromeOS is really just a weird proprietary version of the Linux Kernel similar to Android. Anyways, most of the current fleet of chromebooks my school uses doesn't actually require removing the WP screw; It can all be done from crosh. It could vary for other devices, but my entire district basically exclusively uses Lenovo devices.
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
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
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.
Hello there. I'm going to update my ThinkPad W520 with the Ivy Bridge processor, and I'm kinda scared because I don't know exactly what to do. Would you like to help me and the others by writing a guide? I think you'll have done a great job. After all, you had a great experience.
I'm planning to coreboot my t420. For that I will be using a ch341a programmer. Is it save to use it for t420 without having to change the data pins to 3.3V output?
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 😊
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
I don't know what exactly you're talking about; but I assume it's some old drama with the fsf. Leah is super chill now, and there's no libreboot drama anymore.
@@caleblagrange7164 that drama kept me away from FSF. Those are a cult that will do anything to adhere to their religion even if it goes against the people. They even made their own fork, tried to do a hostile takeover, and now they have a dead project that doesn't work with half of the hardwre in the world.... How moronic can somebody be...
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.
Do not resell these. You can: Unbrick openwrt, mod your BIOS, unbrick your libreboot, coreboot all sorts of spare thinkpads, ME_Clean your whole house...
I don't think so. Their voices sound nothing alike, different githubs, different faces, although the thumbnails are quite similar. And when UA-cam banned mental outlaw Luke didn't get banned as well.
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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 .
@@WardenLord3000 No it's not random, it's the size of the bios rom chip on your motherboard. It has nothing to do with ram. It alone won't be enought though. You also need the bios chip's serial number.
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.
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?
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?
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
Lol, no, it has nothing to do with the speed of light. At these low frequencies delay accuracy is completely irrelevant. If the signal is bad, it's because of dispersion, not delay.
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
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?
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.
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"
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.
@@ninjawaffle4888 Yeah this one is okay, generally I would still prefer not to use it but it's not like it's doing weird things behind your back like ME can. It basically just lets the OS stash key material in it, which often turns into a headache if you have to replace a motherboard. But if you just don't use it, it doesn't cause any harm.
@@baremetaltechtv Interestingly, even up to haswell machines the bios can be replaced pretty easy. It's just the me and ifd regions that get locked down.
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.
@@enermaxstephens1051 A private key used to sign the bios image, the bios prohibits flashing of unsigned images. After you install libreboot internal flashing works.
I should have watched this video sooner, did it just now and I'm half disappointed / half terrified, because you make some critical mistakes that may lead to frying BIOS chip, or at least causing hard to debug problems with it later on. First of all, as some other people already mentioned, you are using very popular SPI programmer that has a fatal flaw - it has 5V on data lines while most of SPI flash chips tolerate up to 3.6V. It MAY fry your chip, don't necessary have to, but it's a risk you DON'T take when it comes to something like computer firmware memory! Second, at the end of the video you mention you had problems with flashing chip with new ROM, and the fact you eventually succeeded doesn't mean you need to retry flashing process until it succeeds, because it "just tends to be glitchy". The reason you were failing this many times is that flash memory draws quite a lot of power during writing process, compared to how much it draws during reading process (ie normal usage). It may randomly glitch out, it may not, but even if it doesn't fail one time doesn't mean it 100% percent succeeded. It may glitch later on when you're using the chip normally (like when you run BIOS from it when turning PC on, it may read some rubbish data in the middle of its content). For this not to happen you need to put ~100nF capacitor between VCC and GND line of the memory chip, preferably as close as possible to the chip's pins. This way you guarantee the chip gets some power buffer that it can draw extra power from when flashing its content. Please put some comments about this on the video, because as of now your video may cause more harm than gain from getting oneself FOSS BIOS.
@@RAnderwill no soldering needed. Flashing the T420 will be basically the same process (a little easier in terms of disassembly). The only caveat is that you'll have to use osboot rather than 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?
The password shoudnt be a barrier and is also pretty easy to remove even with the normal bios. Just remove the clock battery and wait for maybe 10min to be really sure and the password should be gone.
@@harisalic2568 I tried removing the clock battery when I noticed that the bios was locked(like 1 year ago), but didnt work. I don't rememeber for how long I kept it disconnected from the laptop though. Might give it another try. However I remember reading somewhere that at some point thinkpads switched bios chips to EEPROMs, which don't rely on clock batteries to keep their memory active, for that exact case - if someone stole a laptop who had, say, a boot-up password, they could easily get it removed by unplugging and then plug in again the clock battery resetting the bios settings
@@davix3f reminds me of my old Dell laptop. Maybe the ThinkPad also have pads which you can short to reset the bios simmilar to the jumpers on desktops. Or just libereboot it, this will definetly remove the password since the chips don't have any write locks, since those are off the shelf flash chips
you can compile coreboot to be completely free as well, I prefer OSboot for this gen ThinkPad. Hell even the libreboot developer prefers osboot for these lol
The Thinkpad is a working man's machine. Long lasting, reliable, and fixable You don't see much of that anymore.
Yeah much better than all those crappy ultra books that will break in 3 years
How dare you say that and ditch the holy beacon of productivity - the macbook
Many modern non-touch screen laptops are so much easier to work on than these C2D monstrosities. Thinkpads are pretty reliable though, I’ve seen these things sit out in the rain and power on the next day.
@@uvuvwevwevweossaswithglasses I like money.
Edit: and freedom
@@cd-yx3nv I should've put /s there :p
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.
it sounds like you learned that the hard way :)
@@svampebob007 sometimes the screwed are just there to hold the thing together- other times …. Be aware and careful
Dismantle laptop, fix hardware.
Rescrew.
DVD-ROM port has 3 new rivets! (ASUS had these 1 mm short screws in 2000's)
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.
which chromebook did you do this on? this sounds pretty neat
ive since googled and found out there is basically one chromebook that'll do it
I did chromebook repair as a class in my senior year of HS, alongside some tinkering with chromebooks I got cheap off ebay. They're actually fairly simple to mess with as long as they aren't locked to an organization like a school device would be. Since we'd have to replace tons of motherboards (Lenovo cannot design a good motherboard to save their life) I got quite used to messing with the write protection and flashing serial numbers and all that. Ended up being one of the main people in my class for it since I'm experience with a terminal and behind the facade, ChromeOS is really just a weird proprietary version of the Linux Kernel similar to Android. Anyways, most of the current fleet of chromebooks my school uses doesn't actually require removing the WP screw; It can all be done from crosh. It could vary for other devices, but my entire district basically exclusively uses Lenovo devices.
no SeaBIOS? refer to the archwiki page
Here for the reply
I shed a single tear when I remember when you could replace a cpu in your laptop. Short a period as it was.
@@a75431a would the board even read another cpu?
@@TrashwareArt yes it would. it would read the fuck out of that cpu ;_; better times...
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
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
that's pretty neat, is there a website where you sell them?
sauce?
@@MentalOutlaw would you like your channel name to be a discount code on our site?
Aloha I’m not sure why my website keeps getting deleted but
Mighty house Inc
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.
Hello there. I'm going to update my ThinkPad W520 with the Ivy Bridge processor, and I'm kinda scared because I don't know exactly what to do. Would you like to help me and the others by writing a guide? I think you'll have done a great job. After all, you had a great experience.
T430 doesn't make the cut? USB3.0 bro!?
Can I buy one?
I'm planning to coreboot my t420. For that I will be using a ch341a programmer. Is it save to use it for t420 without having to change the data pins to 3.3V output?
This reminds me flashing custom fw on the first gen DOCSIS3 surfboard modems. Well presented.
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 😊
Kenny encouraged me to quit my NSA job.
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
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.
I don't know what exactly you're talking about; but I assume it's some old drama with the fsf. Leah is super chill now, and there's no libreboot drama anymore.
@@caleblagrange7164 that drama kept me away from FSF. Those are a cult that will do anything to adhere to their religion even if it goes against the people. They even made their own fork, tried to do a hostile takeover, and now they have a dead project that doesn't work with half of the hardwre in the world.... How moronic can somebody be...
Gentoo + libreboot + ThinkPad = a force to be reckoned with
And it's done! Now I have a LibreBooted X200! On my way to install Hyperbola
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.
Do not resell these.
You can: Unbrick openwrt, mod your BIOS, unbrick your libreboot, coreboot all sorts of spare thinkpads, ME_Clean your whole house...
It's a very cheap thing.
woah we have the same pfp what are the odds.
They cost literally pennies.
Congrats on your 2nd channel getting 300k subs Luke!
@DarkXSeries7 Yeah, dont you see the white hands? that's not the vtuber black man model
@DarkXSeries7 this is Luke Smith's Deus Ex channel. He doesn't want to mix content with his Minecraft channel.
@@notuxnobux sometimes he has really poor lighting so I can see why anon didn't notice.
I don't think so. Their voices sound nothing alike, different githubs, different faces, although the thumbnails are quite similar. And when UA-cam banned mental outlaw Luke didn't get banned as well.
~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.
These thumbnails never get better
If you know soldering. You can always reprogram the BIOS chip to original, if something goes wrong.
I've installed Coreboot on my W520 and this was very similar. Always wanted to try it, might give it a shot now!
Wouldn't it be better to run a hash check instead of diff on the roms? They are binaries.
It is something that is incredibly inmportant as well as, is ensuring the ec version is up to date.
Has there ever been a time when that mattered?
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
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!
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.
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.
I can't wait for a video on the PinePhone Pro.
Usually red is voltage source and black is ground
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.
thank you for your channel. Really appreciate you taking the time to do these videos
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.
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
Damn ,I will have to switch search engines then,any recommendations
@@wallmartdragonlink2513 Searx is a good option. Startpage is also pretty good
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 .
I will have to install Libreboot on our worker coop server before building our cloud.
this is so cool man, i am learning CS, how long did it take to learn so much? Thanks for the video!
Congratulations for 300k subs on your second channel Luke
I librebooted my x200 a while before watching this so for once I actually understood a whole Mental Outlaw video
@@WardenLord3000 No it's not random, it's the size of the bios rom chip on your motherboard. It has nothing to do with ram. It alone won't be enought though. You also need the bios chip's serial number.
pretty nice, congrats on 300k
This is a new level of freedom. Super impressive!
Congrats on the 300k subs
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.
i have a high end W500, awesome machine and i use it pretty often to this day running windows 10.
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?
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.
Don't use diff, use cmp. The latter is for binary files. Even better is to use sha256sum and compare the hashes.
jayson tatum teaching me to go off the grid
Does display brightness work?
Very nice! Will you play with a BSD distro or gnu guix?
I'm kenny's sister and he said NO
I'm Luke Smith, I think you can't play any games on those distros. Sorry, but you have to overthink further to find what you want 🤓
LOL
@@thegiantratthatmakesalloft9415 Luke smith doesn't play video games though...
@@thegiantratthatmakesalloft9415 nah you can play supertux cart on it
why did you choose the 6year old libreboot release instead of coreboot?
Congrats on 300k!
Congrats on 300k
I've never been this early. Great content bro
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?
I feel like I'm watching one of Lewis's videos
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?
not being spied on
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.
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
Unfortunately I have an R61 which isn't supported by libreboot. Otherwise I would totally do this!
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
Reducing cable length can improve your success rates. Pesky speed of light.
Lol, no, it has nothing to do with the speed of light. At these low frequencies delay accuracy is completely irrelevant. If the signal is bad, it's because of dispersion, not delay.
What if there's no logo or company name on the IC chip?
Thanks for the demonstration!
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
You might be able to unlock it but you'll probably have to check if libreboot or coreboot actually supports your computer.
Yes, some macbooks can actually be librebooted. Check their website!
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?
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.
just go find the supported boards list for coreboot.
There should be more open source firmwares.
Cool, is it possible to flash on a Dell inspiring 5575?
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"
is this better than a x200? could you do a libreboot of that?
Can i use DIY programmer? Using Arduino make a serprog programmer.
yes
@@TheLibertyfarmer thank you, i have successfully done libreboot with my wavgat Uno! 👍
@@rawexploiterp6951 Sweet! I've been wanting to make an arduino flasher myself. Glad you got librebooted
Great video!! thank you AGAIN mental outlaw!
can someone please expain what is libreboot and what is the popouse ?
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.
Why would you ever want to disable a perfectly good piece of hardware......
What's wrong with TPM?
@@ninjawaffle4888 Yeah this one is okay, generally I would still prefer not to use it but it's not like it's doing weird things behind your back like ME can. It basically just lets the OS stash key material in it, which often turns into a headache if you have to replace a motherboard. But if you just don't use it, it doesn't cause any harm.
How to disable IME next? That way we can make sure our notebook's firmware isn't glowing in the dark.
libreboot has the IME completely removed
Wtf is this? Should I customize bios for normal workstation mainboard? Or it should be replaced to Megatrends bios on server mainboards only?
was wondering what will be the best modern laptop for libreboot. w500 has quite old hardware
Almost all supported models will be older. Hard to reverse engineer newer hardware, plus a lot of bios can be locked down tight.
@@baremetaltechtv thank you for answering. What will be the top of the line machine that could use libreboot
@@baremetaltechtv Interestingly, even up to haswell machines the bios can be replaced pretty easy. It's just the me and ifd regions that get locked down.
Coreboot should be usable for newer machines, libreboot only really works for much older ones.
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.
You can flash a signed bios, but only lenovo has the keys.
@@jjjannes It's been two years... what keys are you referring to?
@@enermaxstephens1051 A private key used to sign the bios image, the bios prohibits flashing of unsigned images. After you install libreboot internal flashing works.
Why do you guys requesting videos that are already in abundance on yt
Is this possible on more recent machines?
lol no and won't be for decades
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?
Good question! I think trying to boot with the wrong binary actually bricks the chip. Though I don't really know.
I should have watched this video sooner, did it just now and I'm half disappointed / half terrified, because you make some critical mistakes that may lead to frying BIOS chip, or at least causing hard to debug problems with it later on.
First of all, as some other people already mentioned, you are using very popular SPI programmer that has a fatal flaw - it has 5V on data lines while most of SPI flash chips tolerate up to 3.6V. It MAY fry your chip, don't necessary have to, but it's a risk you DON'T take when it comes to something like computer firmware memory!
Second, at the end of the video you mention you had problems with flashing chip with new ROM, and the fact you eventually succeeded doesn't mean you need to retry flashing process until it succeeds, because it "just tends to be glitchy". The reason you were failing this many times is that flash memory draws quite a lot of power during writing process, compared to how much it draws during reading process (ie normal usage). It may randomly glitch out, it may not, but even if it doesn't fail one time doesn't mean it 100% percent succeeded. It may glitch later on when you're using the chip normally (like when you run BIOS from it when turning PC on, it may read some rubbish data in the middle of its content). For this not to happen you need to put ~100nF capacitor between VCC and GND line of the memory chip, preferably as close as possible to the chip's pins. This way you guarantee the chip gets some power buffer that it can draw extra power from when flashing its content.
Please put some comments about this on the video, because as of now your video may cause more harm than gain from getting oneself FOSS BIOS.
Does this work with T420 models?
It’s gonna depend on the chip. It works just fine on the t400 but not at all on the x200t
There is a good chance you might have to solder - which if you know how is always the better route.
@@RAnderwill no soldering needed. Flashing the T420 will be basically the same process (a little easier in terms of disassembly). The only caveat is that you'll have to use osboot rather than libreboot.
What does Libreboot resolve? I’ve already installed Linux on a laptop and a second HD on my desktop system...
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?
The password shoudnt be a barrier and is also pretty easy to remove even with the normal bios. Just remove the clock battery and wait for maybe 10min to be really sure and the password should be gone.
@@harisalic2568 I tried removing the clock battery when I noticed that the bios was locked(like 1 year ago), but didnt work. I don't rememeber for how long I kept it disconnected from the laptop though. Might give it another try. However I remember reading somewhere that at some point thinkpads switched bios chips to EEPROMs, which don't rely on clock batteries to keep their memory active, for that exact case - if someone stole a laptop who had, say, a boot-up password, they could easily get it removed by unplugging and then plug in again the clock battery resetting the bios settings
@@davix3f reminds me of my old Dell laptop. Maybe the ThinkPad also have pads which you can short to reset the bios simmilar to the jumpers on desktops. Or just libereboot it, this will definetly remove the password since the chips don't have any write locks, since those are off the shelf flash chips
For the algorithm babeh.
mother love me long time long time...
💯 GNU machine
what even IS libreboot, anyway even without knowing this it is interesting
Whats liberboot?
GNU Guix review when
Thanks Kenny!
Whats the state of hackintosh for those?
not sure about the T400/500 but corebooted T420's make a good Hackintosh
Why choose libreboot over coreboot?
Libreboot is a fully libre distribution of coreboot.
you can compile coreboot to be completely free as well, I prefer OSboot for this gen ThinkPad. Hell even the libreboot developer prefers osboot for these lol
I want to Libreboot my T400 and run a pure libre GNU/Linux distro.
does libre boot have settings like cpu freq n such
no. it can be compiled with nvramcui support so you can tweak some settings in linux via a utility
I had to completely disassemble my w500 like this just to remove the power on password.
What's with the ThinkPad? Why is everyone using it lol
best guide
Based.
@DarkXSeries7 The entire thing is based.
@DarkXSeries7 This BIOS = Based Input/Output System
@DarkXSeries7 cringe
never clicked faster