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Advice: I might have bricked my X2100

Old(er) Thinkpads with New(er) Intestines: X62/T50/T70/X210/X330 etc.
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mcfado
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Jan 31, 2023 11:53 am
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

Advice: I might have bricked my X2100

#1 Post by mcfado » Wed Jun 21, 2023 6:35 am

I just took delivery of my X2100, and it was instant love. But all of a sudden, the battery stopped being registered. There have been several discussions about the power issues of the X210 and X2100, so I decided to update the BIOS or EC. Flashrom couldn't detect a chipset, which was weird, but I went ahead and updated the EC regions and ran the x2100_helper.sh, I turned it off for a few minutes and went to reboot... Now the fan turns on, the lightbar below the screen lights up the caps lock, charger AND battery sign.... but nothing happens. I can't get anything to appear on the screen.

Does anyone have any recommendations about how I can save it?

TL;DR: I tried updating EC regions, my beautiful laptop pooped its pants, and now she's just a fan-blazing, light-flashing paperweight.

L29Ah
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Posts: 180
Joined: Fri Sep 06, 2013 2:25 pm
Location: Montenegro

Re: Advice: I might have bricked my X2100

#2 Post by L29Ah » Wed Jun 21, 2023 10:21 am

How about restoring the entire flash contents from the backup you made before writing to it?
51nb X210 with community EC mod, me_cleaner and recelled 99W*h battery; X230 with coreboot, me_cleaner and nitrocaster's FHD mod as a backup; R500 for guests; T60 just for the looks.

mcfado
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Jan 31, 2023 11:53 am
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

Re: Advice: I might have bricked my X2100

#3 Post by mcfado » Wed Jun 21, 2023 2:23 pm

I can't even do that, as it doesn't allow me to go into BIOS or UEFI. I think I'm sending it back to the blessed hands of Jacky.
L29Ah wrote:
Wed Jun 21, 2023 10:21 am
How about restoring the entire flash contents from the backup you made before writing to it?

flyingfishfinger
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Joined: Sun Nov 18, 2012 5:42 pm
Location: San Francisco Bay Area

Re: Advice: I might have bricked my X2100

#4 Post by flyingfishfinger » Thu Jun 22, 2023 4:39 pm

Before you do that, there is always the external programmer route. It can be done with a Raspberry Pi and flashrom: https://www.flashrom.org/RaspberryPi I use a Pomona SOIC clip which lets you keep the chip on board: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/det ... 250/745102

All is not lost! Those are classic signs of a corrupted or failed BIOS flash - been there a couple of times. In fact, when I was playing around with Coreboot, I just installed a chip socket and bought a bunch of blank chips to swap in and out, and saved the original chip in a safe place for recovery purposes.

R

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