Bricked T430 Motherboard - antonizoon/antonizoon.github.io GitHub Wiki

I bought a bricked T430 Nvidia motherboard off of eBay for just $28; in an attempt to experiment with Coreboot, and the legendary T420 keyboard layout mod.

Recoverability Analysis

Granted, I am gambling that the VGABIOS, Intel ME, and EC firmware are recoverable. (Thankfully, I only spent $28 on it.)

If the VGABIOS is unrecoverable, the motherboard is basically useless (unless I can somehow get Coreboot to use Intel Graphics in dual-graphics mode). But it's worth a shot; I'm armed with ucupsz's BIOS backup.

If you can recover the unique IDs and security signatures from the BIOS, you could just inject it into someone else's backup.

Secret Phoenix BIOS recovery Method

However, there might be a saving grace, without any hardware flashing necessary. Apparently the Phoenix BIOS has a secret feature that allows users to install BIOSes by putting the one from the Lenovo website on a memory stick.

The BIOS chip probably has a secret permanent section containing the necessary keys for injection, and secret permanent code that flashes the BIOS from the USB stick.

This might just be a method to flash custom BIOSes on T430/X230/T440 without hardware flashing! Or even Coreboot on X200, X201, and X220 systems.

It seems like phoenix doesnt actually restore your bios, it just sideloads it as if it was a secondary emulated bios (like the legacybios) to allow you to boot into the os and flash a proper noncorrupted bios. At least this is what I assume by looking at FvRecovery an cap packages.
Source

The UEFI Phoenix BIOS Crisis Recovery Files

Briefing

In order to use the UEFI Phoenix BIOS Crisis Recovery method, we have to find the necessary files:

• BIOS.cap
  • Is this the BIOS image itself?
  • With a probability of 90% I can say that the recovery file should be named BIOS.cap and probably should be the entire capsule.
• PFlash.efi
• CrisisRecovery.efi
  • Information about CrisisRecovery.efi
  • According to this post, CrisisRecovery.efi can be found inside a Toshiba BIOS archive. Use 7zip to extract the EXE file.

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• Source: MyDigitalLife.info - Hunting down UEFI Crisis Recovery Files
• Source: BIOS-Mods - UEFI Dell XPS Modded BIOS Howto
  • Discovery of the Crisis Recovery Method

Actual Flashing

After gathering the files, use the actual Phoenix UEFI BIOS Crisis Recovery method.

What is needed

Of course, it takes more than a motherboard to make a computer. I have to collect these components:

• Socket G2 CPU (Ivy Bridge) - I need some kind of cheap Ivy Bridge CPU for the motherboard to boot. I settled on the Pentium 2020M, which costs only $12.
• A ThinkPad T430 Screen + Cable (available) - I have a 1366x768 screen in storage (leftover after I replaced it with a 1600x900 screen), just need to get shipped over to my new place.
• DDR3 RAM (available) - Need a stick of RAM. I can just borrow one from one of my operational computers.
• SATA Hard Drive (available) - Need a spare SATA hard drive with GRUB2 + Linux on it.

Analysis of the Keyboard Layout Situation

Apparently, modern BIOSes now outsource keyboard layout configuration, along with other low level processes, to the Intel ME/EC chip. This means that we would have to modify the firmware there to support new layouts such as the T420 keyboard. What a pain.