Other Custom BIOSes - bibanon/Coreboot-ThinkPads GitHub Wiki

The ThinkPad series is rich with modified BIOSes that unlock the full capabilities of the motherboard.

  • Fn-Ctrl Swap - The ThinkPad has a nonstandard placement for the Fn and Ctrl keys, which can be confusing to users of typical computers. However, starting with the T420 series, most modern ThinkPads have an option in the official BIOS to swap the keys.
  • Hard Drive Speed Increases - Some laptops had BIOSes which had not yet been updated to use SATAII speeds, which significantly slows down SSDs. Middleton's BIOS was developed to enable it.
  • mPCI Whitelist Removal - IBM and Lenovo have a long standing policy of putting in mPCI whitelists in the BIOS for some reason. Most modified BIOSes are were designed to remove this restriction.

Middleton's BIOS

Middleton's BIOS is the most famous of all modded BIOSes. It unlocks SATA II speeds, and makes it possible to use SXGA+ screens on modified X60 systems. It is essential to the FrankenPad, Hackintosh mods, and just any *60/*61 series ThinkPad in general.

Other Modded BIOSes

Call to Action: These modded BIOSes are in grave danger of link rot, since they were uploaded nearly 2-6 years ago onto file sharing sites, many of which have cleaned out their links or have died entirely.

ThinkPad X301

Due to link rot, there is only one known BIOS left. Thankfully, it is Serg008's SLIC+Whitelist BIOS.

  1. Update your BIOS to the official Lenovo version that Serg008's BIOS is based on.

  1. Use the BIOS flasher in that archive to install the Lenovo BIOS.

  2. Download Serg008's SLIC 2.1 + Whitelist removal BIOS (it is also backed up elsewhere, just in case sendspace gets deleted)

  3. Use the BIOS flasher in that archive to install it just like any normal Lenovo BIOS.

T60

A modified copy of the newest T60 bios, version 2.27 is linked on the German Thinkwiki.de site. The BIOS claims to be white list free and has SLIC 2.1 added. (SLIC 2.1 functionality was tested. Once Windows 7 was installed and registered the T60 was then upgraded Windows 10 with no issues).

http://thinkwiki.de/T60 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15415342/no2010/Lenovo%20T60_79uj34us_SLIC21_no_whitelist.iso

Coreboot

The ultimate modded BIOS.

  • ThinkPad T60 (Nvidia GPU) - While T60 systems with Intel GPU support Libreboot, these Nvidia GPU systems require binary VGA blobs.

Libreboot

Libreboot goes much further than Coreboot and create a laptop entirely free of proprietary binaries. The Libreboot laptops are one of the only systems certified by the Free Software Foundation to protect your freedom.

Only a select few ThinkPads are compatible with Libreboot. But at the very least, these are systems that are definitive Classic ThinkPads.

  • ThinkPad X60/X60s - All X60 systems are supported by Libreboot.
  • ThinkPad X60 Tablet - All X60 Tablet systems are supported by Libreboot. Wacom Digitizer Pen is now supported on the latest Libreboot builds.
  • ThinkPad T60 (requires SXGA+ resolution or higher, Intel GPU only) - The most famous Classic Flexview ThinkPad of all also supports Libreboot. Unfortunately, motherboards with Nvidia cards