This is an aggressive method for when isopropyl alcohol on a towel is too slow or requires too much elbow grease. See the caveats section!

Materials

• Isopropyl alcohol, 100 mL or more
• Copper or copper-coated scourer
• Heavy-duty scrubbing pad (like the green piece on top of dish sponges)
• Magic eraser (replace with non-scratch scrubbing pad if not available)
• Paper towels
• A couple of hours

PPE

• Adequate ventilation
• Dust mask (microplastics)
• Sturdy, waterproof gloves, or in my case, non-waterproof fiberglass gloves over thin foodservice gloves
• Old clothes (stains)

Method

Remove power, batteries, and any electronic components you can.

This is an iterative process, so not every step has to be done perfectly in one pass.

Magnesium parts (usually the lower chassis and lid)

• The rubber coating is bound more strongly here than on plastic parts.
• Wet an area about 5 cm in diameter with isopropyl alcohol. There should be a shallow puddle of it where you will scrub.
• Scrape off the rubber coating: rub the copper scourer firmly in circular motions. It should begin to slough off with the consistency of boogers.
• Continue until no more rubber scrapes off, then repeat until the entire surface has been scoured.
• Remove residues: wet areas 5 cm in diameter as before and scrub, but now with the scrubbing pad.
• Wipe: moisten a paper towel with isopropyl alcohol, wipe off the entire surface, and let dry.
• Inspect: once dry, look for any outstanding rubber patches. Go over them again starting with the copper scourer, using lateral motions if it is especially stubborn.
• Polish: Moisten a magic eraser with isopropyl alcohol and firmly scrub over the entire surface.
• Finish: Wet a paper towel with water and wipe off until melamine dust from the magic eraser is gone and the surface no longer stains the towel black.

Plastic parts

• Same as previously, but omit the copper scourer.
• Whereas the sloughed off rubber just migrates up into empty spaces in the copper scourer leaving the working edge exposed throughout the process, the rubber will foul scrubbing pads. Either have several pads on hand or wash out the rubber with soap and water.

Cleanup

• Soap and water

Caveats

• This process severely defaces stickers, the ThinkPad emblem, and glossy surfaces
• Direction of scrubbing is evident in fine scratches throughout treated surfaces. In my opinion, a scuffed ThinkPad is better than a sticky ThinkPad; I did not try further polishing or restoration steps.
• Results on painted magnesium will be uneven, with some patches of primer standing out where the rubber degraded more slowly and magnesium showing through on edges and corners after scrubbing.
• Rubber debris will get caught in grilles. Scrape it out at the end using a toothpick.
• Anything sloughed off will stain anything it contacts.

How it works

The rubber, once degraded, cannot be rejuvenated, but may be scraped off with fingernails. Copper and scrubbing pads, with a similar hardness to fingernails, can perform the same scraping action, sped up with the addition of isopropyl alcohol, a solvent for the rubber, primer, and paint. Still, the rubber will not just dissolve like sugar in water. The key is the scraping action, otherwise the soft rubber just ends up getting pushed around the surface.

The nature of rubberized soft-touch coatings on ThinkPads and other electronics, to my knowledge:

• The coating is a thin layer of polyurethane or otherwise synthetic unvulcanized rubber.
• With exposure to ambient moisture, molecules in the rubber eventually undergo hydrolysis, where the rubber polymer chains are broken up by intruding water molecules.
• Result is a soft, sticky mess as the petroleum-based rubber gradually returns to its natural state.

On a ThinkPad, each part may have a slightly different rubber coating

• Magnesium chassis: Rubber coating strongly bound to a primer layer, which lies on top of the black paint over the magnesium itself.
• Large plastic pieces (old E-series palmrests, antenna enclosure of X230): Rubber coating bound directly to smooth black plastic or a primer on top of smooth black plastic.
• Small plastic pieces: Rubber coating bound loosely to smooth black plastic.

Personal observations regarding the above:

• The coating wears out fastest on corners and edges.
• Rubber coatings degrade at different rates across different parts. On my X230, the coating on the lid was in much better shape than the lower chassis (both are magnesium parts).

What didn't work (all tested on my beater ThinkPad):

• Rubbing with just an isopropyl alcohol-soaked paper towel
• Just an isopropyl alcohol-soaked magic eraser
• Water-based baking soda paste
• Toothpaste
• Olive oil
• WD-40
• Hand sanitizer
• Soap and water
• Isopropyl alcohol with a screwdriver (deep, narrow scratches)
• Baby powder (comes off and turns sticky again after a week of use)

What worked too slowly

• Isopropyl alcohol-based baking soda paste
• Non-scratch scrubbing pad
• Isopropyl alcohol with a copper coin

What was not tried, mostly because I didn't want to spend over $10:

• Plasti-dip
• D-Limonene
• Methylated spirits
• Goo gone

I bought a ThinkPad T440p with Libreboot and SeaBIOS installed. I'm planning to upgrade the CPU to an Intel Core i7-4910MQ, but before purchasing, I wanted to double-check if there would be any compatibility issues with Libreboot and whether the computer would recognize the new CPU.

Recently i got an T14 g5 amd with the 8840u cpu. The laptop itself is really nice overall. But this thing does have coilwine, even on powersave mode. Cpu and gpu wise, the T14 g5 intel 155H should be kinda similar. Does someone has this laptop and can tell if this one has a problem with coil wine?

My T480 runs hot and sometimes the fan is really loud. Occasionally upon boot it'll give me "fan error." Tried reapplying the thermal paste but that didn't help much. It's got plenty of storage, ram, and an i7 processor, so it's not for lack of power that it's doing this.

At this point I'm thinking of investing in a fan/heatsink upgrade, but what do y'all recommend I upgrade the fan/heatsink to?

Has anybody else expierenced the same issue?

Basically, a collection of notes on building and running libreboot on t480. Hope it helps sb avoid a few pitfalls I've personally encountered. Corrections/other ways to do stuff are welcome.

1. If you're building libreboot from source like I did, you may want to replace repo URLs with mirrors in config/git/grub, as gnu repos are slow AF;
2. To boot your system, you'll need it to either be bootable via legacy bios (libreboot uses seabios by default), or, more realistically, have grub bootloader. On NixOS, I've changed the bootloader config to:

boot.loader.grub = {                          
  enable = true;                  
  device = "nodev"; # generate grub.cfg without installing grub itself  
  theme = lib.mkForce null;       
  font = lib.mkForce null;        
  splashImage = lib.mkForce null; 
};                                

Notice the disabled theming/fonts/background image: in my case, libreboot's grub would only show the blank screen 'til I disabled them, so you may want to trim your config to only menu entries or something. Then when booting, you simply press ESC, choose grub, and select either loading the OS or searching for bootloader configs on NVMe.

3. If you didn't do [2], and are unable to boot your system, you may have some trouble with seabios not seeing your live USB you're bringing to fix that. In this case, try again a few times: as far as I can tell, that happens when you press ESC too early.
4. Having seabios auto-start grub: echo '/rom@img/grub2' > bootorder && cbfstool libreboot.rom add -f bootorder -n bootorder -t raw (slightly modified command from here). Dumping and re-flashing libreboot without an external programmer is done with flashprog -p internal and requires iomem=relaxed in kernel cmdline;
5. Annoying stuff: FnLock turns on when booting or waking up from sleep; unsure on how to disable this as nvramtool refuses to work (mb a skill issue). Also, disconnecting the external battery while the laptop is powered on seems to cause a reboot.
6. Libreboot's grub can be themed: see this for how it's currently done (although, note, that we need config/grub/xhci/config/payload and not config/grub/default/config/payload) and this for an example of how it can look.
7. Battery stuff, probably related to the Embedded Controller's firmware: charge thresholds don't seem to work (and the corresponding files are missing), ~~/sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/energy_{now,_full{,_design}} are now charge_full{,_design}, new option current_now~~ [Edit 3: this seems to be related to changes in the kernel or something]

[Edit] 2 more bugs:

1. ~~Charge cycles are always 0 [mb an issue with my batteries, tho]~~ [Edit 4: at least one person reports their batteries reporting charge cycles as intended; likely the problem with my batteries];
2. ~~The laptop constantly tries to power on if it dies due to depleted battery.~~ ~~[Edit 4: Possibly a one-off or a different reason altogether, couldn't trigger it again.]~~ [Edit 5: reproduced it; seems to happen when both batteries are present and upower is not installed; works fine with upower, tho]

[Edit 2]:

1. charge measurements don't play well with cosmic-epoch on nixos in my particular case: the percentage doesn't seem to get updated, but looks somewhat correct upon reboots;
2. Reduced backlight brightness range: /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/max_brightness is now 15, and not ~1515 as it was before.

[Edit 5]:

1. Mute/micmute indicators not working;
2. Monitors connected via the dock aren't detected when hot-plugged (works fine on {re,}boot, mb distro-related?)

im looking into replacing my current x230 and framework laptop with an old thinkpad.

my requirements are: great linux support, compact (as much it can), alum or metallic body.

good to have: boxy look, model after 2018, coreboot/libreboot (i doubt new models are supported but one can dream)

does this thing exists?

Libreboot support for T480/T480s is here!

Building Coreboot

• Significantly easier and lower risk than I expected. A lot is already taken care of once the mainboard is selected. There are many safety and sanity checks in the build process.
• Make sure to select "General Setup">"Option backend to use">"Use CMOS for configuration values" so that nvramcui and nvramtool works.
• Even if flashing only the top chip, build for the entire 12 MB ROM. Otherwise, the machine won't have the correct offset for the MRC cache and will cold boot when it should be resuming from suspend.

Installing Coreboot

• I am not yet confident enough to use an external programmer with my 3612QE board, so I opted for the 1vyrain route.
• Extracted the top 4MB of coreboot.rom using dd and once booted in the 1vyrain installer, overwrote /root/bios/X230.rom (double-check this for yourself, just going off my memory here) and let it flash the chip. This workaround to avoid having to upload my bios somewhere and connect 1vyrain to the internet.
• After that, the bios region of the chip is unlocked. To update the bios with a new build, run sudo flashrom -p internal -i bios --ifd -w build/coreboot.rom --noverify-all
• In the event of GRUB misconfiguration, run set prefix=(memdisk)/boot/grub, ls your way to your grub.cfg (the one in the boot partition, not the one in EFI) and get back into Linux with configfile (disk,part)/path/to/your/grub.cfg

Observations

• Boot times are fast, only 2.5 seconds to the LUKS password prompt
• All components are recognized and seem to work as usual.
• Battery life is good. About 1 W increase in idle power consumption over the regular BIOS.
• The wifi card changed from wlp3s0 to wlp2s0
• The 3612QE CPU, QM77 chipset, and Coreboot all have documented ECC support. Regardless, the machine still does not boot if ECC RAM is installed. Bear in mind that I only had one such stick of RAM (SK Hynix EP3L-12800S 8GB) to test.
• The 3612QE board now charges with a stock 65W charger.
• I am using the ME Disable option in nvramtool for now. Eventual goal is to use me_cleaner.

Quirks

• The power button LED occasionally does not light when booted. No obvious cause yet and no adverse effects associated with it.
• Rarely and without obvious cause, the reported battery percentage suddenly drops to 0. Immediately upon plugging in the charger, the correct percentage comes back.
• This may or may not have to do with the installed 9-cell Kingsener battery. My other corebooted X230 with an i5-3320M and DTK 6-cell has been used equally as much without ever encountering this issue.
• EDIT: the issue is indeed related to the Kingsener battery. The battery also jumps back to a normal percentage within a few seconds even if I don't plug in a charger. No work lost due to the issue yet.

So, I'm making this post because I'm currently torn between 3 options:

• Upgrade my current T450 with 16GB of DDR3 and a 256GB (or maybe 512GB) NVME which has an i5-5300u and 1080p display
• Get a T14(s) G1 with an AMD CPU (for about 400 euros or so)
• Save up for a long time to buy a Framework laptop

The role of the laptop would be to do some software dev tasks and some light gaming (think ULTRAKILL, Minecraft and KSP, so really not anything that can't run on a good enough iGPU). Battery isn't much of a priority, since I'll use it plugged in most of the time, but it is preferred for when I do need it, nevertheless I don't wish to sacrifice CPU performance for it like what my T450 does when it crawls to 800MHz to extend its battery life from 4 hours to 5 hours (it has a dual 3-cell setup, both batteries at about 75% health). While I can save up a lot for a Framework or even a T14 Gen 5/6, I'd rather not because I just don't find it worth it for the price, and because It'd wear down my patience. Another large priority is durability, I am insanely clumsy. For example, one time I dropped my T450 at the very edge of a table so that it hit my foot and broke its old 1366x768 panel (good riddance, that resolution was atrocious). From what I can remember, most ThinkPads are in some way MIL-STD certified (80G or 80H depending on the model IIRC), starting with (unfortunately for my T450) the T460. I'd also like at least an FHD or higher display, but everything I've listed passes that. The only real benefit here for a Framework is the "eternal laptop" concept where I don't have to replace the laptop itself, ever, because I can just upgrade the parts in a Thesseus' ship kind of way, like some desktop users do, but parts are scarce here in Greece, especially for Frameworks, so I'd have to get them shipped from their website which is not ideal. If there are any other ThinkPad options (available in Greece!) at about the price of the T14, then I'd be glad to hear them.

To conclude, here are my priorities, grouped from highest priority to lowest priority:

• Available in Greece, preferrably at a physical store
• CPU Performance, Durability
• Resolution, Repairability
• Battery life

That is, turned on its side so the display is vertical, using an external keyboard. I'm thinking of getting one of the Yoga models, which are naturally suited to that. I run primarily browsers, emacs, and maybe calibre, under Debian GNU/Linux. My questions:

1. Any issues getting the X server to work that way?

2. Any issues with cables having to stick out of the edges and poke things? At minimum a power cable, but i like to use Ethernet instead of WiFi when I can.

Thanks!

I found this in near immaculate shape, for $2 at a Goodwill.

I'm trying to figure out what "era" (for lack of a better word) that this ThinkPad bag belongs to.

I'm maybe more specifically trying to find out if it's an appropriate match for my A30p.

Just got it today so I haven't had much time to play with it yet. But feel free to ask me anything about it and I'll answer when I can. The model I got has the non-touch 100% sRGB 400 nits display.

Yesterday this usb port works as usual, but today I turned on the notebook and just nothing. I tried to connect usb stick, phone, but nothing. lsusb can's see it. What can I do, what can I check?

So, I think we all know how when companies upgrade they sell all their old laptops, flooding their market and making them insanely cheap, ThinkPads being the most well known for this.

Now, in places like the US there are a lot of stores for this, such as eBay. But I'm in Greece and I'm not keen on international orders (shipping costs, potential tariffs if extra-European, several other reasons).

Does anyone know of any (trustworthy) stores for used ThinkPads in Greece? I've looked at some already and they have some nice deals (particularly on T495s, X1s and T14s) but I want to make sure I'm getting the full picture.

UPDATE: After flashing coreboot with the option to "Enable ECC if supported", ECC RAM still does not work. The screen and lights come on and the speakers emit a continuous high tone. The memory tested was an 8GB stick of 2Rx8 EP3L-12800E from SK Hynix. It is unbuffered ECC to the best of my knowledge. I'll write up my thoughts on corebooting this particular board when I have used it for some more time.

After learning that the 3612QE itself supports ECC RAM in contrast to the stock CPU options and that the QM77 chipset also does, I purchased a DDR3 SODIMM with unbuffered ECC. I have not been aware of any other attempts to test this combination.

The machine did not POST and did not produce any beep codes. Absolutely no response to any input aside from shutting down when briefly holding the power button. Everything returned to normal upon putting the original RAM back.

I suspect the BIOS lacks support, but whether this changes with coreboot remains unknown to me, at least until I learn how to prepare and flash coreboot.

This is purely an exercise in curiosity.

Does anyone know how to order or configure the P14s G5 AMD with a OLED display on the German Lenovo site?

The OLED display seems to be NA exclusive apart from a few overpriced offers from third party sites...

Found it on a local market place site, the seller said it's a Lenovo T14 Gen4

I'm looking to replace the battery of a ThinkPad T410 (and maybe of a T480 as well but i haven't tested them yet).

What are the recommended places to get them in the EU?

I've already found ifixit for the T480 but i'm more focused on the T410 atm.

So, yet another "if you're in the middle of nowhere and can't/don't_want_to wait for proper tools to arrive" kind of post.

Firstly, there's pico-serprog with quite good instructions from the libreboot project. Unfortunately, it didn't want to detect the chip at all in my case (in hind sight, likely due to the board pinouts being different between my board and a regular pico and them providing pico pins and not gpio numbers)

What worked, albeit rather slowly, was pico-dirtyjtag. If using this one, the connections are as follows:

• cs - gp19
• miso - gp17
• mosi - gp16
• clk - gp18
• gnd - gnd
• 3v3 - 3v3

The chip pinouts can be sourced from the libreboot guide/a laptop schematic/ic datasheet. Flashing with sudo flashprog -p dirtyjtag_spi -w rom.rom (or flashrom instead of flashprog). It may complain that there are multiple definitions matching the chip, in which case you manually choose one of the mentioned with -c (in my case -c W25Q32FV and -c W25Q64BV/W25Q64CV/W25Q64FV for top and bottom chips respectively).

Also applicable to stm boards with the main dirtyjtag repo.

Hey, Lemmy. I've recently broken my ten-year-old MacBook in a mishap involving some ionic cleaning fluids, and I am looking to replace it with a ThinkPad.

I am currently at uni, studying cybersecurity, and this particular course also has a lot of software development at the start. I also would be looking to play some videogames (nothing too taxing though; really just Minecraft, Terraria, Stardew Valley, etc.; assuming I don't go for FreeBSD instead of Linux), watch some videos, and do a bit of video editing.

The device being replaced was a mid-2014 MacBookPro11,1 A1502. Compared to my other hardware, though, this is a powerhouse.

I have already looked at a few models (namely the T450 and the X1 Carbon Gen. 10), but these have always had a snag or two that are a deal breaker.

Of course, I will be running either Linux, BSD, or some other *nix.

In terms of specs, I would be needing:

• At least 8GB of RAM (or upgradable to/past)
• A CPU equal or better than the i5 in the Mac
• At least 256GB of storage (SSD preferable, but not essential)
• 1400x900 resolution or higher
• WiFi drivers available for BSD
• Decent battery life
• Screen must be less than 17", or it won't fit in my bag
• Ideally no more than five years old; although an older ThinkPad could be doable
• Either AMD-based or made after 2018 (to prevent Meltdown attacks, should I decide to run Linux-libre or something else without microcode updates)

Unless a device is ridiculously expensive, the cost shouldn't be a problem. Also, I live in the UK.

So, any suggestions?

So, I've dug up my corebooted t440p and decided to check if it'll work with the battery from my t480, and it did! Well, sort of.

Since coreboot also replaces the embedded controller firmware (mb sometimes they keep blobs of it, idk, but certainly not in case of t440p), we won't get those nasty "battery not supported, pay me" messages even if they've changed the verification since then.

However, I suspect some batteries may be unprepared for the power draw of earlier models. I've tested it on 2 batteries, one was a 22wh → 72wh conversion with BMS built on top of a cheap controller with rather unpleasant feedback from battery repair people; the other one was a more trustworthy 72wh clone powered by bq8050. The latter one worked ootb, while the former somewhat worked: fine in uefi, fine in grub, drop voltage to 0 as soon as the os starts loading → poweroff. If the power supply is plugged in during boot, the battery works fine (may drop voltage again under load, haven't tested it myself).

Soo, basically the use case is that you can try to retrofit the guts of a newer battery into older thinkpads if those run core/libreboot.

In an effort to keep my X230 snappy for a few more years until I find/make a newer laptop to my liking, I finally caved in and bought an i7-3612QE board. Posting some observations and thoughts based on the questions I had prior to buying. Previous CPU was the i5-3320M.

Setup

• Debian 12
• XFCE
• 16GB DDR3L
• Two SSDs
• Hyper-threading disabled
• 1vyrain BIOS with classic keyboard EC patch

Performance

• Not literally twice as fast, but the improvement is quite noticeable
• CPU no longer seems to struggle while loading Javascript-laden websites
• Rarely hits 100% CPU usage, even on Youtube (sadly bloated enough to be a sort of benchmark)
• Single-core tasks are only slightly better than before

Thermals

• High 40s at idle to mid 60s when busy
• Feels cooler compared to previous CPU, which I assume is due to the CPU usage being lower across all tasks.
• Did not upgrade to the AVC cooler. Toshiba cooler works well and is quiet as ever.

Battery

• About 4.5 hours of office tasks and light browsing from full to empty with an aftermarket 55 Wh 6-cell at 98% health
• Wattage in the mid 9's at idle with brightness at a comfortable level for a well-lit room. Increase from low 8's with the i5-3320M.
• When doing actual work, wattage hovers from 11 to 15 watts
• 16 to 18 watts watching Youtube videos
• SLT1 IPS display does consume ~1 W more than TN. I installed tlp but left it on default settings.
• 65W Lenovo charger only works when in sleep mode or shut down. In normal use, however, it will not draw the full 65 W. A 90 W charger or a 65 W GaN charger that the X230 believes is 90 W will both work (my 65 W GaN charger worked well and did not overheat, YMMV)

Other

• Make sure to enlarge the cutout on the black sticker on the underside of the cooler since the 3612QE die is larger
• EC flashing will require a 90 W charger or a 65 W GaN that the X230 believes is 90 W.
• Factory CPUs have BGA package underfill. I have not checked for myself, but it is likely that the upgraded CPU does not have underfill. This should not affect day-to-day use, but the lack of underfill will make the BGA solder joints more susceptible to fall and vibrational damage. Liquid may get trapped underneath in the event of a spill.

Value

• With shipping and taxes, the upgrade costs about 200 USD and takes 2 hours. The total cost-to-date on my X230 built from parts is around 500 USD.
• Do not think of this upgrade in terms of how much performance you get for the price. Think of it like upgrading and daily-driving a classic car. If it brings you joy to daily drive an X230 as it does for me, then it may be worth it.

Just bought thinkpad t480 and have some problems with my usb devices: with my mouse and keyboard. Mouse and keyboard just don't work for 1 sec randomly. Fresh installed arch linux.