Hey Peter,
Thanks again for your elaboration, I've had a go at this last weekend, or at least, I tired to.
On Tuesday, September 1, 2020 1:37 PM, Peter Stuge peter@stuge.se wrote:
I haven't used it myself because soldering is easy for me, but apparently at least one person had success with the GPIO33 method.
I wasn't able to locate those traces from the top. To get a full view of the board, you'd have to remove the CPU heatsink and take it out of the frame, so I don't really understand how you would do this while powering on the system, it would probably overheat immediately.
Unfortunately, I don't have a heat gun at hand to desolder the chip either, so I'm considering just doing a dirty ISP and seeing where I can get.
Unless there's some other way to disconnect the linked components? But I can't really think of one.
I found t410 board challenging for me also since yes Im also inept with a hot iron. After doing some reading and being directed to other github threads, I found this helpful https://www.coreboot.org/Board:lenovo/x201 since the x201 and t410 share similar specs, I was able to flash coreboot onto chip with "ch431a programmer at 3.3v" and boot. Unfortunately I was unable to get coreboot bios and me_cleaner to work together (manually and/or through "make nconfig" script). If anyone was able get both working happily W/O soldering I'd very much appreciate some insight.
Now this wasn't like other coreboot install on my x230. AND POWER WAS MY ISSUE in reading and flash write to chip(had to learn hard way) and I wasn't too much concerned in the end w/ damaging board. So I can't say if the method I chose was safe or even reliable, I've done limited testing, but I was able to boot into stock linux OS and list devices. In the end I stayed w/ a stock/me_clean'd bios - WIfi card wasn't listed in lspci w/ coreboot bios =(
Person in previous post - Peter Stuge - seems to know a great deal about this project and by no means do I feel his advise isn't sound or valid so.... hope this is helpful.
Hi Stéphane,
Stéphane Delaunay via coreboot wrote:
On Tuesday, September 1, 2020 1:37 PM, Peter Stuge peter@stuge.se wrote:
I haven't used it myself because soldering is easy for me, but apparently at least one person had success with the GPIO33 method.
I wasn't able to locate those traces from the top. To get a full view of the board, you'd have to remove the CPU heatsink and take it out of the frame, so I don't really understand how you would do this while powering on the system, it would probably overheat immediately.
Yeah, best leave the heatsink attached. If you do remove it then you should clean off all thermal paste and apply fresh paste before reattaching it.
But as I understand the intent of the R566 pads, they should be within fairly easy reach on the board, somewhere nearby the J27 PCIe Mini Card connector.
Unfortunately, I don't have a heat gun at hand to desolder the chip either, so I'm considering just doing a dirty ISP and seeing where I can get.
If the flash chip is SO-8 or SO-16, if you have another flash chip and if you only need to reprogram once (ie. you have a known-good coreboot image) then you could remove the flash chip by cutting its pins flush with the black chip package using a sharp nose side cutter, remove the black package with the chip, then desolder the pins one at a time, use solder wick to clean up the pads, and finally solder the second flash chip in - *after* programming it with a beaglebone, rpi or some other programmer.
Kind regards
//Peter
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Jay Banes -
Peter Stuge -
Stéphane Delaunay