New subject: Lenovo Thinkpad T61

31 Jan 2014

      On 31.01.2014 17:08, Roberto A. Foglietta wrote:
...
2014-01-31 Peter Stuge <peter@stuge.se mailto:peter@stuge.se>:
Roberto A. Foglietta wrote:
> I check the list of supported motherboards and laptops but I did
not found
> in them the Lenovo Thinkpad T61

That means that it is not supported.

Thanks Peter for the fast answer.
> I would like to understand the magnitude of probability to brick
> the laptop before.

The probability is 1.0.

I am interested in the probability after some development / adaption,
not as-is.
How much developing effort do you think the support of T61 would require?
Northbridge (i965) is unsupported. It's almost impossible to write
raminit without having a lot of low-level experience and even then it
takes couple of months of quite intensive work.
You may get lucky and i945 raminit may work with only minor adaptations but:
1) I wouldn't count on it
2) And even then find out what exactly needs adaptation is no easy task.
I have a laptop with i965  as well, in storage but I have to tell it's
simply not worth the effort. You'd be better off cuying some recent
supported laptop (see supported mobos pages, especially chromebooks and
Lenovos) or some almost supported laptop and adapt to it. But:
a) Problems may pop up in unexpected places.
b) While guys in #coreboot are extremely helpful you end up being on
your own in 95% of problems (unless someone has a similar chipset and
works on it, currently nobody AFAIK).
c) Easiest (but not easy) to adapt would be (from easiest to difficult,
no guarantee, problems may pop up in unexpected places):
- T410. All components are already in the tree. The problem with this
laptop is that it has TSOP chip, for which clip is very expensive, so
you probably would have to solder to the chip with all the risks it
entails. Actually for most people it means to ask someone to solder for you
- Nehalem-based laptops. Main problem is likely EC
- AMD-based laptops. Main problem is likely EC.
- Lenovo *30 laptops (ivybridge). Dual graphics can be a headache but
it's feasible. If chip is TSOP, see T410 comment.
- Other ivy or sandy laptops. Depends on how much MRC code likes or
dislikes your laptop.
I repeat again that even the easiest ones are hard if you have no
low-level experience and even if you do can become hard in case of
unexpected problem.
On the other hand if you're curious about it , do it! It's a fantastic
learning experience.
...
To answer to this second question I suppose you need logs, do not you?
lspci -vvnn is available for most laptops with quick google. It (+some
experience with individual manufacturers about EC interface) allows to
estimate hardness.
...
Cheers,
R.

Re: [coreboot] Lenovo Thinkpad T61