ThinkWiki - User contributions [en]

Installation on ThinkPads without CD-ROM drive

2010-10-25T20:16:50Z

Mungewell:

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Some ThinkPads (e.g. the whole X series) come without a CD-ROM drive by default. Even though there are options to buy a solution like the UltraBase, a full dock or simply an external CD-ROM drive{{footnote|1}}, this is not the cheapest option and might not always be necessary. Also, with some external CD-ROMs the problem might arise that the ThinkPad is not able to boot from them. See our [[Supported Boot Devices|List of supported boot devices]] for various ThinkPads.

So the question arises how to get your system of choice onto that precious piece of hardware. This page should tell you about the possible solutions.

Since in most cases the installation base packages come on CD, you'll need a second computer, equipped with a CD-ROM drive, for all of those solutions.

Many older ThinkPads came with only a floppy drive and cannot boot from any CD drive at all. For those machines, booting from floppy is the only option. Then one can install from CD, over a network, or from the hard drive.

Another thing to note is that the timing of an external CD/DVD drive can be 'off'. On some machines (such as the X21) switching to 'Diagnositic (Slow) Boot' can allow booting from a USB CD.
|}

==Installation from USB drive==
{{NOTE|Not all ThinkPads have a BIOS that [[Supported_Boot_Devices|supports USB booting]].}}

This is probably the easiest approach:
#Connect the USB drive{{footnote|2}} to the host and format it.
#Get a bootable system and all needed installation files onto the USB drive, i.e. by copying the complete filesystem from your installation CD-ROM to the USB drive. Of course if your USB drive is not big enough for that you'll have to make more sophisticated choices about what to copy and what to leave behind. Here are [http://wiki.debian.org/BootUsb some instructions] (and [https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick instructions for ubuntu], [http://debian.org/releases/lenny/i386/ch04s03.html instructions for Debian 5.0 (Lenny)]) for converting a LiveCD ISO image onto a pen drive, and making it bootable.{{footnote|3}}

#Insert the USB drive into the USB port of your ThinkPad.
#Power on the ThinkPad and press F12 to get to the boot menu. For some models (X24 comes to mind) you need to go into the BIOS and change the boot sequence before USB devices are shown in the boot menu.
#Select the USB drive as boot media and boot.
#Follow the normal installation process.

It seems some ThinkPad BIOSes don't use the code on the master boot record (MBR), or at least skip it when it is blank. These systems will need an [http://www.tsden.org/ryutaroh/extipl/ Extended-IPL boot loader]. Putting this Extended-IPL boot loader onto the disk (such as <tt>sda</tt>) goes something like this:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1 count=446
dd if=/usr/lib/extipl/aldebaran.bin of=/dev/sda

==Booting from a PCMCIA device==
Many ThinkPads, even as old as some original Pentium models, can boot from a PCMCIA slot. The device must appear as a normal hard drive for that to work, and it must have boot code on the first block of the device. PCMCIA hard drives and some PCMCIA card readers (compact flash, SD, memory stick, etc.) will work for this purpose.

If your distribution offers an installation image, just copy it to the device and boot from it. Here's a sample that works with Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon). Insert the card and reader into a laptop running Linux. If the device mounts automatically, unmount it. Run these commands:
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/gutsy/main/installer-i386/current/images/netboot/boot.img.gz
gunzip boot.img.gz
sudo dd if=boot.img of=/dev/sdb (careful!)
Be '''very''' careful when typing that last line. A typo could erase your hard drive. This image installs over a network, but there are other larger images that install the entire system directly.

Put the card reader and any other needed cards (such as a network card). Get into EZSetup and change the boot order to PCMCIA then HDD-1. Reboot and the installation should start.

==Installation via network boot==
Thinkpads support PXE to boot off another system that is connected via [[Ethernet]]. In this case the ThinkPad acts as a network boot client, the other system as server. The idea is to boot a system on the server that the ThinkPad can boot into then by loading all required data directly from that server.

For this to work you will have to either have both the server and the ThinkPad connected in the same subnet of your LAN, or have them connected directly via a crossed Ethernet cable.

===Using Windows as a server===
To get your Thinkpad to boot over a network, you must set up a DHCP and a TFTP server. For Windows, the freeware program [http://tftpd32.jounin.net TFTPD32] does both. To set up TFTPD32, do the following:
#Create a directory that will contain the PXE boot code.
#Copy the boot code into that directory. (For a Debian Sarge install, for example, you can find code to initiate a network install under <code>debian/dists/sarge/main/installer-i386/current/images/netboot/</code> from a Debian mirror -- copy files to simulate symlinks for <code>pxelinux.0</code> and <code>pxelinux.cfg/</code>)
#Launch the TFTPD32 program.
#"Browse" to set the current directory to the directory containing the PXE boot code (i.e. the directory you created in the first step, above).
#On the DHCP server tab, set:
##<code>IP pool starting address</code> to something appropriate for your network
##<code>Size of pool</code> to a non-zero value (all you really need is 1)
##<code>Boot file</code> to the PXE boot image (for Debian, the filename is <code>pxelinux.0</code>)
##<code>WINS/DNS Server</code> to the DNS server used by your network
##<code>Default router</code> to the IP of your default gateway
##<code>Mask</code> to your network's netmask
##<code>Domain Name</code> to your network's domain
{{NOTE|Do <em>not</em> under any circumstances run the DHCP server if there are other DHCP servers on your network. There must be only one DHCP server on each network segment. You must either disable the other server or move to another network.}}

On your ThinkPad, do the following:
#Boot your Thinkpad, and press {{key|F12}} to select an alternate boot device
#Use "<code>Intel(R) Boot Agent Version 4.0.17</code>" (or similar -- on the Transnote used to make this guide, "<code>Network Boot</code>" did not work while the "<code>Boot Agent</code>" option did)

The TFTPD32 server window should show activity as the ThinkPad downloads files. Once the first stage has installed and the ThinkPad is ready to boot from its own hard drive, shut down TFTPD32 and re-enable your permanent DHCP server.

===Using [[:Category:Knoppix|Knoppix]] as a Terminal Server===
If a server system is available on the network, it can be used to set up a temporary Terminal Server. Follow these steps to set up the Terminal Server using Knoppix:
#Insert the Knoppix CD into the server and boot it up. Make sure to boot with the 2.6 kernel by giving the <code>kernel26</code> boot option.
#Once your KDE desktop is loaded, look in the K-Menu hierarchy for the link to the terminal server setup. Select this menu option.
#Launch the Terminal Server and make it use the appropriate network device.
Back at your ThinkPad, do the following:
#Power on your ThinkPad and press F12 to get to the boot menu.
#Select the ThinkPad's network adapter as the boot media.
#Reboot. The ThinkPad should now boot from the Knoppix Terminal Server directly.

===Using any Linux on the server side===
{{Todo|needs better formating, maybe a list where to find the kernel/initrd images on other distros and a hint to speed up booting}}

# TFTP Server
#* Download and install an tftp Server
#* Configure it to serve {{path|/tftpboot}}
# Get the kernel and initrd image from your distribution
#* For fedora-core they are in {{path|os/images/pxeboot}}
#* Copy both to {{path|/tftpboot/vmlinuz}} resp. {{path|/tftpboot/initrd.img}}
# [http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/boot/syslinux/ Bootloader]
#* Download the current syslinux-X.YZ.tar.bz2 tarball
#* Copy the included pxelinux.0 to {{path|/tftpboot/pxelinux.0}}
#* Create a directory for the configuration with {{cmdroot|mkdir /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg}}
#* Create the file {{path|/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default}} with the following contents:
DEFAULT install
PROMPT 1
TIMEOUT 0
LABEL install
kernel vmlinuz
append initrd=initrd.img --
# DHCP Server
#* Download and install an DHCP Server
#* Configure it to for your Thinkpad, the following configuration assumes that the MAC-address of your Thinkpad is DE:AD:BE:EF:00:00 and should use the IP 192.168.0.2 with namesever/router/tftpserver 192.168.0.1
allow booting;
allow bootp;
host thinkpad {
hardware ethernet DE:AD:BE:EF:00:00;
fixed-address 192.168.0.2;
option domain-name-servers 192.168.0.1;
option routers 192.168.0.1;
default-lease-time 28800;
filename "pxelinux.0";
next-server 192.168.0.1;
}
#* Now you can boot your thinkpad via lan

==Installation from the internal harddrive==
The idea here is to have all required files already on the internal harddrive when you power up your ThinkPad for installation, including of course a minimal system to boot up and start the installation process.

Convenient, but how do you get the files there?
*One option is to copy them via network boot (see above).
*Some Linux distributions offer ways to download the installation files from a FTP server and to choose this directory as installation source instead of a CD-ROM.
*A second way, if you already have a 'working' copy of DOS or MS Windows installed, is to start the installer from loadlin or GRUB. This is detailed [http://marc.herbert.free.fr/linux/win2linstall.html here].
*Another one is to remove the harddrive from the ThinkPad and connect it to the other machine. Again, this can be achieved in several ways:
**putting the harddrive into an UltraBay secondary HDD adapter of a second ThinkPad
**putting the harddrive into an external casing and connect it to the second machine via USB, PCMCIA or whatever
**connecting the harddrive via a 2.5" (laptop) to 3.5" (desktop) harddrive adapter

Follow one of the following instructions.

===Installing [[:Category:Windows|Windows]] 2000 or XP===
*Attach the harddrive to the host computer and install a minimal bootable DOS system i.e. by booting a Win98 Emergency Boot Disk and performing the command "SYS X:" (where X = the laptop's harddrive).
*Copy FDISK.EXE to the laptop harddrive.
*Return the harddrive to the laptop and boot to DOS. (If you have Win98 installed by default, you can skip the first two steps and simply reboot in Windows to DOS.)
*Run FDISK and set up your new Windows system partition on this laptop. (If you do not do this on the laptop, after reboot you will receive the infamous "NTLDR IS MISSING" error. This error may still occur if the partition is greater than 7.8gb in size)
*Then return the drive to the host and format the drive as FAT32. (DO NOT format as NTFS.)
*Repeat the "SYS X:" step to make the new partition bootable.
*Copy Himem.sys and Config.sys, too. Otherwise SMARTDRIVE.EXE won't run
*Get SMARTDRV.EXE from the internet and copy it to your Thinkpads harddrive.
*Also, from the Win2K or WinXP CD, copy the I386 folder to the harddrive.
*Return the laptop's harddrive to the Thinkpad one final time and boot to DOS.
*Run SMARTDRV.EXE first, then change directories to I386 and run WINNT.EXE, this will allow the installation to begin.
*During installation, choose NOT to format the destination partition, since it contains the installation files. If you want that filesystem to be NTFS you can convert it after installation from within Windows.

==Installation from Diskette==
===Installing from CD===
Many distributions have software on CD that will make a boot floppy that will allow you to install from an unbootable CD drive.

===Installing over a network===
Some distributions have a set of diskettes that will allow you to boot a machine, enable a network device and start installation over a network. For example, {{Slackware}} supports installing via an NFS mount. An unofficial add-on adds an option to install over FTP.

===Installing from floppy===
Some distributions did allow for a complete installation from diskette. As the size of distributions and the number of required diskettes has grown, and the ubiquity of optical storage increased, support for floppy installation has diminished.

However, there are still some Linux distributions that fit on as few as one diskette - with very limited functionality, of course.

==Installation from an ISO image==
Some distributions offer a way of installing directly from the downloadable ISO image, residing on your harddisk. Examples are VectorLinux 5.1 and {{SUSE}} 10. The individual distributions installation manuals will guide you through the process.

==External Sources==
*[http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/altinstall.xml Gentoo alternative installation method HOWTO]

{{footnotes|
#External CD-ROM drives typically are connected through USB or [[PCMCIA]]. Be aware that not all of these drives are [[Supported Boot Devices|capable of booting]]. USB connected drives are more likely to be bootable on a ThinkPad than PCMCIA connected ones.
#USB drive here means any kind of USB connected bootable data storage device, including external harddisk drives, memory card readers or pendrives.
#Most USB keys are already bootable. If it won't work, use lilo to write to the USB key's MBR: See the section "Master Boot Record" [http://wiki.debian.org/BootUsb here].
}}

[[Category:TransNote]] [[Category:560]] [[Category:560E]] [[Category:560X]] [[Category:560Z]] [[Category:570]] [[Category:570E]] [[Category:X20]] [[Category:X21]] [[Category:X22]] [[Category:X23]] [[Category:X24]] [[Category:X30]] [[Category:X31]] [[Category:X32]] [[Category:X40]] [[Category:X41]] [[Category:X41 Tablet]] [[Category:Knoppix]]

Talk:BIOS Upgrade

2009-08-29T15:09:21Z

Mungewell:

== Dead link ==

The link to the FreeDOS floppy (http://www.ankreuzen.de/freedos/files/fd9sr1/fdos1440.zip), which is needed to upgrade the BIOS from a CD, is dead. Is the information still valid? And is there a different source for the floppy image? [[User:Jamesavery|Jamesavery]] 05:49, 18 February 2007 (CET)

== BIOS upgrade using WINE ==

Does anyone think this would be possible? [[User:Mcalwell|Mcalwell]] 08:58, 28 January 2007 (CET)

: No this is not possible. [[User:Mcalwell|Mcalwell]] 16:01, 12 February 2007 (CET)

== BIOS upgrade without battery ==

Concerning the known problem with 600 series with batteries dead too soon, it is impossible to upgrade the bios without the battery because the original ibm update program doesn't allow this. I bought an old 600E without the battery. There was one workaround, but i think for the older releases of the bios, where you just extracted files and upgraded manualy, bypassing the ibm install program. The page that describes this (i lost the link) has a list of different files, that the ones found in current release so i never did figure out what to do? I would like to upgrade because i have really old bios, where ACPI doesn't cooperate so well with the operating system, either windows or linux.

If somebody finds a workaround please help. Thanks

//Edit

I've found the page on Vim's bios upgrade forum.. I don't know if it exactly for my model, since the files differ.. '''Is it possible, to upgrade bios in linux without the battery?'''

''I have found a working solution WOW on the other forum:

*** This is NOT a safe way to update the bios (disclaimer) ***

* First you need to make a BIOS update floppy disk (from the bios file from IBM - place disk in a: drive, run app and answer Y to the agreement) and then format another disk by right clicking on A: - format - make system bootdisk (assuming you have another machine spare)

* Copy all the files from the IBM Boot disk - in my case
$0029000.fl1
$0029000.fl2
FLASH2.EXE
PROD.DAT
UPDTFLSH.EXE
updtrom.exe
USERINT.EXE
UTILINFO.EXE
to the other clean bootdisk.

* Ensure that there is no config.sys and autoexec.bat so it just runs straight into DOS.

* Place the disk into the Laptop, reboot and allow the machine to load via the floppy

* At the command prompt, type "FLASH2.EXE /U" with no quotes then press enter.

The program will automatically search for the files *.FL1 & *.FL2 and load the bios first then the platform file.

The program will automatically update and perform erasing on the rom and then finish with "Update complete".

* Now reboot.

* Hold F1 down as you turn the laptop back on and go into Easy Setup under "Config" click on Initialize to ensure defaults and settings are error free.

* Save and exit...''

// EDIT

This worked on my machine.. I make no guarantees it will work on others.

The above procedure did not work on my T23 using the 1.20 bios; it kept returning error 14 (Low Battery). However, following those instructions and running "qkflash" rather than flash2 did work for the main bios, and later for the embedded controller.
--grythumn

// EDIT
The provided solution didn't work on my R31: even with qkflash /U i get the low battery message - is there any other solution ?
-- joer

== Bios upgrade & hidden partition ==

I have disabled the hidden partition to make more space for linux (24G). I still have Windows on the 14G partition. Is it safe to upgrade the BIOS without the hidden partition? I want to get a newer BIOS to fix the annoying fan issue. Thanks

- yes don't worry about it. bios upgrades have nothing to do with whats inside the harddrive.

== BIOS upgrade over PXE ==

Hi,

I have a Thinkpad X20 with a very early BIOS and Embedded Controller Program which I'd like to update. Currently, the only feasible way of doing this is over the network using PXE. I already have a fully functional PXE server using SYSLINUX, and have so far been able to boot the BIOS diskette image using MEMDISK, although I have not attempted to flash anything yet due to the warnings given on the page. Is there any safe way I can update both the Controller Program and the BIOS in the same session over the network in this manner? If not, what other methods would be suitable? I have a USB CD-ROM drive and could probably get hold of a USB floppy drive.

Thanks.

Update: I ended up burning CDs as described and successfully updated everything. I'd still like to know if there is a way I could do it entirely over the network, though.

== RE: grub initrd ==

"Another possibility which works even without a CD-drive or network is to boot the disk image via the grub initrd mechanism."

0) Interesting suggestion. Might be better of in its own section.

1) Could you please elaborate?

2) My first guess (pending your elaboration) would be to "chainload" the first block of the diskimage using the grub commandline, like:
blocklist (''path'')/''to''/''diskimage''
chainloader ''blockvalue''+1

But that's just a guess!

[[user:Pebolle|Paul Bolle]] Fri Jul 15 12:20:47 CEST 2005

== bios/controller update sequence ==

The article says:
"If you go through the readme's on the IBM site they'll cleary state that you must update the Control Program first, then imediately update the BIOS"

When I look at the IBM udpate instructions for the T23, it says:
"If you need to update the BIOS as well as the Embedded Controller Program, update the BIOS first."

Comments?

> I would first contact IBM for clarification, but you should probably be following instructions specific to your model.

>> I did it following IBM's instructions to upgrade the BIOS first. Everything worked out great!

== Firmware upgrade for Intel minipci combo card ==

I just purchased an [[Intel 10/100 Ethernet Mini-PCI Adapter with 56K Modem]] that has an ancient (2.0.6) firmware version. I Downloaded the update file intlbtag.EXE but cabextract was unable to find any cabfiles inside it. I tried running the program via wine and that didn't work either.

Finally I ran the program on a windows machine and created a boot floppy. Then I went through the the process of converting the floppy to a bootable cd via linux and that worked like a charm. The cd successfully updated the minipc card's firmware.

Everything worked but I ended up needing a windows box to do it. Could this have been done without windows?

== Firmware upgrade for Wireless LAN MiniPCI COMBO Card using prism2_srec ==

The appropriate firmware installation program for the wlan card in my R32 can be extracted using cabextract as described in the article. It contains (besides some installation programs) a disk image (1awg06ww.IMG) that seems to be a simple dos boot disk. This image contains 3 .hex files (id010001.hex, pk010100.hex, sf010402.hex) that are recognized by prism2_srec to be "srec"-files. Trying to load them to RAM yields:

{{cmdroot|prism2_srec -v -r wlan0 sf010402.hex}}
S3 CRC-16 generation record: start=0x007E1800 len=65642 prog=1
Start address 0x00000000
srec summary for sf010402.hex
Component: 0x001f 1.4.2 (station firmware)
<snip>
Interface compatibility information:
role=Supplier variant=2 range=1-9 iface=Station Firmware-Driver (4)
role=Actor variant=1 range=1-1 iface=Modem-Firmware (1)
role=Actor variant=2 range=1-1 iface=Controller-Firmware (2)
role=Actor variant=1 range=4-4 iface=Primary Firmware-Driver (3)
<snip>
Wireless LAN card information:
Components:
NICID: 0x8013 v1.0.0
PRIID: 0x0015 v1.0.7
STAID: 0x001f v1.3.6
Interface compatibility information:
PRI role=Supplier variant=1 range=1-1 iface=Modem-Firmware (1)
PRI role=Supplier variant=2 range=1-1 iface=Controller-Firmware (2)
PRI role=Supplier variant=1 range=4-4 iface=Primary Firmware-Driver (3)
STA role=Supplier variant=1 range=1-9 iface=Station Firmware-Driver (4)
PRI role=Actor variant=2 range=1-1 iface=Controller-Firmware (2)
STA role=Actor variant=2 range=1-1 iface=Controller-Firmware (2)
STA role=Actor variant=1 range=1-1 iface=Modem-Firmware (1)
<snip>
This image is not meant to be downloaded to volatile memory.
Incompatible update data.

Has anyone tried to flash this device using prism2_srec yet?
What bothers me is, that the upgrade is for many different parts of the combo card. Does anyone have an opinion on whether this could work?

OK, I took the risk and successfully upgraded my station firmware, BUT when I tried to upgrade the primary firmware the system froze!!! The thinkpad won't start up with the miniPCI card inserted and all efforts to reflash it using the original DOS boot image failed!!!

I'm quite sure the system freeze was not caused directly by prism2_srec, because I have noticed rare system freezes since I have been using my PCMCIA wireless card.
Anyway, if anyone should own a TP R32, I'd be glad if he could tell me the base address of the Wlan card, or it's PCI address.

Thinkpad r32 owner here. I want to upgrade the firmware as well. If you need any information just send an email to haftbar[a]gmail.com [[User:Quickie|Quickie]] 02:12, 1 February 2006 (CET)

==Reorganization suggestion==
The Downloads section is rather long. Would it be an idea to put it on a separate, new page (say: BIOS_Downloads) and link to that new page from this page?

[[User:Pebolle|Paul Bolle]] 21:27, 15 Oct 2005 (CEST)

> I agree with this suggestion.

== Upgrading BIOS and Embedded Control Program from Win XP ==

I'm trying to upgrade the BIOS and Embedded Controller Program from Windows XP following the instructions on the Lenovo website. The problem is the instructions are not very clear about this. The instructions basically state that I must upgrade them at the same time because the Control Program does not work with the older BIOS and the BIOS does not work with the older Control Program. They also state that I should upgrade the Control Program first.

But that means I must boot into XP after having upgraded the Control Program but with the older BIOS in order to then update the BIOS. But if this works then they are actually compatible and there's a contradiction. Am I missing something? I just want to make sure I don't end up with a non-functioning unit.

I have an X23 and want the latest BIOS (v 1.32) and Control Program (v 1.30).

Maybe there should be a note about this in the article? Or maybe I'm the only one who is this stupid :)

Update: I talked to Lenovo support. The situation apparently is that though the description says that the newer control program is not compatible with the older BIOS, they are not so incompatible as to cause the machine to stop working so it is actually possible to use incompatible versions of BIOS and control program. In fact according to the support person it makes no difference if the BIOS is upgraded before the control program or vice versa. So I upgraded the control program using the executable running in Windows XP, which rebooted the computer to perform the upgrade and then I booted Windows again to upgrade the BIOS in the same manner and it all worked fine. If anyone reading this finds it useful maybe you can put it in the article? Or if you find it superfluous just delete this section.

--[[User:xphinx|xphinx]] 12 March 2007

I have an X22 with BIOS version 1.21 and Embedded Controller version 1.17 and using the steps described by you, I succesfully updated my bios to the lastest versions from WindowsXP (BIOS v1.32 / EC v1.30)
Thanks!

== BIOS upgrade for T21 with T20 BIOS ==

Hi, I bought a used T21 recently (type 2647-8AU), and would like to update the BIOS to the latest version, but there's a problem: this T21 appears to have a T20 BIOS (IYET50WW, a/k/a T20 BIOS version 1.11). When I try updating this BIOS using one of IBM's T21 updaters - I tried KZET34WW/v1.16 (the latest one) and KZET16WW/v1.01 (the earliest one) - I get the following message:

<blockquote>
''The diskette in the default drive will not run on this system. Your system is now locked. To restart your system, press Ctrl+Alt+Del.''
</blockquote>

I suspect this message appears because the existing BIOS is a T20 BIOS.

There would appear to be two options: either use the most recent T20 updater (IYET61WW, a/k/a T20 v1.22), or find a way to defeat the block in the KZET34WW/v1.16 T21 updater. Obviously either option is risky in the absence of more information and/or detective work. And I don't know enough about T2x-series hardware to hazard a guess (i.e., were early T21s just T20s with a speed bump, did some T21s get T20 BIOSes by mistake due to factory error, or are the T20 and T21 similar enough that it doesn't matter whether a T20 or T21 BIOS is used).

Some relevant data gleaned from the stickers on the case bottom and the current BIOS:

<blockquote>
* '''Type:''' 2647-8AU (T21 with 800-MHz processor)
* '''S/N:''' 78-0GL1Z (zero-G-L-one-zed)
* '''Manufacture date:''' 03/2001
* '''BIOS version:''' IYET50WW (T20 BIOS v1.11)
* '''System unit S/N:''' (appears to be blank)
* '''System board S/N:''' J1HHS15CL5C
* '''System board P/N:''' 08K3747 (printed on motherboard)
</blockquote>

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

-Linux Spice

P.S. At first I thought this might be a Frankenstein ThinkPad with a T21 case and a T20 logic board - I did buy it used, after all - but it does have an 800-MHz processor, which was never an option for the T20 (both the BIOS and Linux report it as such), and all the other equipment checks out (except for the hard drive, which was replaced with a 40-GB model).

== Force Upgrade a Thinkpad T20 to latest Thinkpad T22 BIOS ==

i managed to force upgrade my t20 to a t22 bios using a strange method.

i snagged a "bios bootdisk" from bootdisk.com (it's a drdos/caldera dos boot disk), wrote the image to a floppy disk, then copied to it the PHLASH.EXE flasher, $0179000.fl1 (renamed to BIOS.BIN) and $0179000.fl3 (renamed to PLATFORM.IMG) from the T22 1.06 update from ibm/lenovo's site. i think any lower version would work, but it tried it with that. anyways.

i inserted the disk into the thinkpad t20, booted off of it, then ran PHLASH. it reflashed the t20 with the t22 1.06 image no problem. now the machine's in a frankenstein state...t22 bios, t20 ec, etc. i took the floppy out (or made another floppy, whatever), wrote to it the latest available update from ibm/lenovo (at the time of writing, although i doubt it will ever be updated again, is 1.12), booted the thinkpad t20 off of it, and the bios reflash disk was satisfied that the machine was a t22. more waiting, and the thinkpad t20 is now a thinkpad t22! for me, it means no more waiting for the machine to count memory every single boot (it remembers the value and quick boots now), and it perfectly supports my 1400x1050 display from a damaged thinkpad t22!

end result: reflashed a thinkpad t20 with the latest thinkpad t22 bios, and now the machine presents itself as a thinkpad t22. the hardware's similar enough that it can pass itself off as such just fine.

hope others can share in my success.

--[[User:SaturnNiGHTS|SaturnNiGHTS]] 15:49, 11 May 2008 (EST) (also uses "SatNiGHTS" on IRC)

== BIOS format ==

Not sure if this is the right place, but...
Does anybody know what the formats for the various files are in the bios package (or, even better, the bios.bak file that gets dumped on your disk before updating)? I'm getting progressivel lower and lower level in figuring out just what happens when the computer boots, and the BIOS is the last step... (BTW, I have an x60s)

-- Unknown

Yes. It is a binary dump. Sometimes, there is junk in the start of the file. This should be data enough for you to figure out what you need.

--[[User:Hmh|hmh]] 13:30, 26 February 2007 (CET)

== BIOS update gone bad ==

I tried to flash my [[:Category:600|ThinkPad 600]]'s bios with catastrophalic outcome; now the machine is unable to boot. I, being overly stupid and too self-confident, ignored all warnings about the media containing the bios image not being write-protected (I used one partition of the disk, in which I had installed FreeDOS). During the updating process, the machine started to write screens full of random characters in cyan coloured background. At that point I knew it was b0rked. I asked my friend about what to do now, he said I could open the machine up, locate the bios chip and use EPROM programmer/burner to write the bios image to the chip. He also said that because my machine is very old, there are probably not safeguards like dual bios or emergency bios update from floppy disk on boot. He continued by saying that the bios update file images from IBM/Lenovo website might not be actual , "pure" binaries which could be burned directly to the chip, instead they may contain some vendor-specific checksums which must be taken into account. In ThinkWiki there seems to be no page about bios flashing gone bad and restoring the machine to working condition. Or is there? I really need your help with this; I think I'm able to locate the bios, take it off and find a working EPROM burner, but where can I get a clean BIOS image without the vendor checksums? I'd be grateful for any references.

--[[User:Usv|Usv]] 12:45, 31 March 2007 (CEST)

== BIOS upgrade using USB flash drive ==

I flashed my Thinkpad X41 succesfully with 2.09 BIOS using bootable USB flash drive with DOS 6.22 system files. (I guess Freedos would work aswell). I had such key laying around so I can't help you with making one (i used windows HP USB key format utility to make it long long time ago)
Everything is quite simple once you have USB key and are able to boot DOS from it.

I downloaded the non-diskette ThinkPad BIOS update utility (74uj15us.exe) from lenovo support site and extracted the disk image from it using cabextract:
{{cmduser|cabextract -F "*.IMG" 74uj15us.exe}}

I mounted the image file (74UJ15US.IMG):
{{cmdroot|mkdir /tmp/mnt}}
{{cmdroot|mount -loop o 74UJ15US.IMG /tmp/mnt}}

I mounted the usb key and made a directory for ibm flash utility files under it:
{{cmdroot|mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usbflash}}
{{cmdroot|mkdir /mnt/usbflash/ibm}}

I copied the contents of /tmp/mnt to /mnt/usbflash/ibm:
{{cmdroot|cp /tmp/mnt/*.* /mnt/usbflash/ibm}}

Then I unmounted the USB stick and rebooted from it to DOS (F12 during boot -> USB HDD).<br>
In the DOS Prompt:<br>
C:\cd ibm
C:\IBM\flash2 /U
I waited for about 1 minute, then my thinkpad made two beeps to signal that the flashing was complete.

PS. Because lacking reliable guide on how to make bootable DOS USB stick for ThinkPads I decided to leave this into discussion section. Please feel free to move/edit all the necessary stuff into the BIOS upgrade article if you know/figure out how to make bootable DOS USB stick in linux. I tried various tutorials including http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Create_a_DOS_boot_USB_flash_drive, but didn't manage to boot into the Freedos prompt.
--[[User:ladoga|ladoga]] 04:56 17 Apr 2007

==Reserving RAM for my X3100 graphics card==
Is there any way in the BIOS to reserve memory for my graphics card? I have 2 GB of RAM, which is more than enough for general system processes so I'd like to allocate some to my Intel graphics card. [[User:SteveSims|SteveSims]] 19:36, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

==BIOS Doesn't want to install==
During the install process on a Z60m, I get the error message, "An update is not necessary at this time. The process has been canceled." The program is right, I am using the same latest BIOS version. However, I have a different, new boot splash image on it. I was wondering if there were any way to force a reflash - the program gives me no way around this.

Turns out that I had put the bios splash on incorrectly. It should reflash if you change the splash image. But in case you needed to reflash an identical bios for any reason, one thing that worked for me was downgrading and then upgrading.

== Converting Current BIOS CD-ROM for USB Flash boot ==

The latest Lenovo BIOS releases in bootable CD-ROM format (for the X200 in my case) are using hard disk emulation rather than floppy emulation.

I peeked at the ISO with hexdump and found the hard disk image, including its MBR and partition table, starting at byte offset 0xd800 in the particular image I inspected. I won't explain the crude way I found this, but it was easy to verify. I used "tail -c +55297 foo.iso > boot.img" and then loaded this up in a loopback device to verify that fdisk saw a proper partition table.

Simply dumping this image to a USB flash drive via dd if=boot.img of=/dev/sdb then created a bootable drive and I successfully booted this and updated my X200 BIOS. Your mileage may vary...

-- karlcz Oct 16 16:09:40 UTC 2008

== Floppy Disk, Failure Mode ==

I've just had the mispleasure of toasting my wife laptop during a floppy HC4 flash. The problem was that the read from floppy failed with 'abort, retry, fail'. After a couple of 'retry' attempts, I mistakenly hit 'fail' (rather than 'abort'). The program then decided to flash with whatever it had in memory and toasted the machine (which will not turn on at all now).

--[[User:Mungewell|Mungewell]] 15:09, 29 August 2009 (UTC)