tabroughton / thinkpad-ec

Infrastructure for examining and patching Thinkpad embedded controller firmware

The main purpose of this software is to patch the EC on xx30 series thinkpads to make the classic 7-row keyboards work. There are also patches included (but disabled by default) to disable the authentic battery validation check.

With the patches included here, you can install the classic keyboard hardware on many xx30 series laptops and make almost every key work properly. The only keys that are not working are Fn+F3 (Battery) and Fn+F12 (Hibernate)

Unfortunately, there are a small number of thinkpads with a model number from the "xx30" series that are using a completely different EC CPU and a different BIOS update strategy. Thus they are not currently able to be patched. This is known to be the case for at least the L430, L530 and E330.

• A full writeup of the hardware modifications needed can be found at: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Install_Classic_Keyboard_on_xx30_Series_ThinkPads

• More information for hacking on this can be found in the docs/HACKING.txt file.

• A video presenting how these thinkpad laptops were hacked is online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzmm87oVQ6c

Step-by-step instructions:

This software expects to be run under Linux. For best results, ensure you have updated your BIOS to a recent version before starting. If there is too large a difference between the BIOS and EC versions then the flash process will not complete.

1. Ensure you have installed the prerequisite packages On debian, this can be done with:

   sudo apt-get install build-essential git mtools libssl-dev

2. Clone a copy of this repo on to your computer:

   git clone https://github.com/hamishcoleman/thinkpad-ec

3. Change to the directory created by the clone:

   cd thinkpad-ec

4. Show the list of laptops and USB image file names:

   make list_laptops

5. Choose your laptop model name from the list shown. E.G. "patched.x230.img" for a x230 laptop.

6. Using the name chosen in the previous step, make the fully patched image for this laptop (this will download the original file from Lenovo and patch it):

   make patched.x230.img

7. Insert your USB stick and determine what device name it has. (Note: chose a USB stick with nothing important on it, it will be erased in the next step) This command should help you find the right device:

   lsblk -d -o NAME,SIZE,LABEL

8. Write the bootable patched image onto the USB stick device (replace the "sdx" in this command with the correct name for your usb stick)

   WARNING: if you do not have the right device name, you might overwrite your hard drive!

   sudo dd if=patched.x230.img of=/dev/sdx

Your USB stick is now ready to boot and install the patched firmware.

Notes:

• You can also create a bootable CDROM image for burning to a disk by asking for a ".iso" file instead of the ".img" in step 6 above. Then you can use your normal CDROM burning tools to put this image on a blank cd and boot it up, skipping steps 7 and 8.

• To include the battery validation patch or to make a build that reverts any EC changes, read the docs/CONFIG.txt and follow the configuration instructions in it before running step 6.

Booting the stick and flashing the firmware:

While flashing the firmware is as simple as booting the USB stick created above, there are a couple of steps that can help the process. This is more a list of issues that the community has discovered as the patch was applied in different circumstances than a hard and fast set of requirements.

• Ensure that you are seeing two screens, one with information about the patch, including which laptop type it was built for, and another after reboot which says "Flashing EC". If you don't see the second screen, your EC has not been flashed, and you should continue reading below to see what steps you can take to ensure the EC is properly flashed with the patched firmware.

• For best results, ensure you have the power charger plugged in during the flashing process.

• The firmware flash process generally requires you to have a charged battery plugged in to the laptop before it will complete. It may be possible to bypass the requirement for a charged battery if you unplug the battery completely. Alternatively, it might be simply looking for any battery /and/ the power charger plugged in. Yes, this is contradictory, but it is worth trying both options.

• An ultrabay battery is not considered by the update mechanism to be a suitable source of power - when trying different battery options, ensure you are trying batteries in the main battery slot.

• Ensure your BIOS has been configured to boot from "Legacy" and not "UEFI" before trying to boot.

• If you do normally use UEFI boot, there has been at least one case where the EC does not get flashed until the BIOS is switched back into UEFI mode - after which the EC was automatically flashed on the next reboot.