ThinkPad X230/X230T external flashing

Minifree now sells the Libreboot T480, instead of the Libreboot X230. See: https://minifree.org/product/libreboot-t480/

NOTE: Libreboot standardises on flashprog now, as of 27 January 2024, which is a fork of flashrom. The reason why was explained, in the Libreboot 20240225 release

PLEASE READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE INSTALLING, OR YOU MAY BRICK YOUR MACHINE!! - Please click the link and follow the instructions there, before flashing. For posterity, here is the link again.

NOTE: Internal flashing (from vendor firmware) to Libreboot is possible, on this board, but the steps are a bit more complex than using an external flasher. See: internal ivybridge flashing

Read the Ivybridge/Haswell common guide if you want more information. All of the following instructions assume that you’ve cloned lbmk and are operating from the root of that project. To do so, run

git clone https://codeberg.org/libreboot/lbmk
cd lbmk

You can now follow the rest of the instructions.

Preparing a release Rom

Please follow this prior to flashing, or you may brick your machine.

Please inject vendor files prior to flashing. You can also use this guide to change the built-in MAC address for your Intel Gigabit Ethernet device; doing so is advisable, because otherwise you will have a default, generic MAC address.

Splitting The Rom

You can use dd to easily split your rom into the two separate portions for external flashing.

dd if=libreboot.rom of=top.rom bs=1M skip=8
dd if=libreboot.rom of=bottom.rom bs=1M count=8

Flash the top chip with top.rom, and tho bottom chip with bottom.rom. Don’t worry about knowing which chip is which on a standard setup; flashprog will let you know if the image size is incorrect for the chip you’re flashing.

Disassembly

Start by removing the battery. Remove every screw from the bottom of the machine marked with a keyboard/touchpad indicator.

Pry up the keyboard and separate it from the palmrest.

Unplug the ribbon cable from the palmrest and pry it off as well.

Pull up the protective cover to reveal the two soic chips for flashing.