thinkpads and coreboot/libreboot

With the Thinkpad line, nothing newer than a Core 2 Duo can be booted without vendor firmware/binary blobs.

This works out to all of these:

R400 / R500
T400 / T400S
T500 / W500
T60, X60, X60S, X60 Tablet (only Intel GPU)
X200 / X200S / X200 Tablet

R500s pop up on Ebay, pre-librebooted, for around $100-$130. But I can’t justify buying such old hardware at that price. Even if they were sub $100 I don’t like the 15” screens, they’re too big and it makes the laptop too large for me.

What I had

My X200 is dead. When power is applied it lights up the Ethernet LEDs and then dies. I haven’t been able to find any descriptions of a problem like this. I may still tear it apart and poke at its insides, but I’m not very hopeful that I’ll be able to resurrect it. I have fond memories of playing Shadowrun on there, but other than that it didn’t get too much use. It was an ebay buy for less than $90 something like six years ago (max ram, with dock, and battery!). I wanted to libreboot it, and had torn it apart a few times, but never managed to get around to it.

I inherited an X201, but that’s no longer supported because the fans don’t work properly without the management engine.

What I (recently) picked up

I have recently obtained an x220 and an x430, both i7 and max out at 16GB of RAM. The x220 has the traditional thinkpad keyboard and has a very comfortable 12” monitor at 1366x768. The x430 has the newer thinkpad keyboard and what feels like an enormous 14” monitor at 1900x1200.

My first x220 is an i5 that I got on trade from a friend, it’s been very useful, but the case is damaged in a few spots and it feels like it could fall apart. It feels sturdier when docked, but then it’s clunkier and heavier. I started looking for a second x220 so that I would have a reference system when I started flashing the firmware of the first one. So the second one I ordered at an almost embarrassing premium because it came with coreboot pre installed (which means I wont need hardware to flash it.) Still, ~$300 for the 6-cell battery version, i7, web cam, 120GB SSD, and pre-loaded with 16GB of RAM, it’s not terrible. The battery is also lasting longer than the replacement that I picked up for the i5 x220.

I wanted the x430 so I could play with IvyRain and I noticed I could get an i7 one for less than $80 on ebay. This seems to be a recurring theme with me and ebay. The x430 has too big of a screen (for me) to be a practical laptop system and I’m not a fan of the keyboard it has. When I’m done with it I may ebay it or try to give it away. It’s perfectly serviceable as a Linux machine and it’s very responsive. Failing that, it will go on a shelf as a backup system for when one of my others dies or for random experimentation.

Okay, why?

I didn’t do my homework and I didn’t realize I wouldn’t be able to use a fully open libreboot on these systems, but I can still use coreboot or libreboot with blobs. And the hardware cost vs usability is still worth it to me.

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