The majority of the payloads supported by coreboot are built automatically once they are selected and configured as described in the next section.

Most beginners want to use the default SeaBIOS payload. It runs Option ROMs, is able to discover boot devices and provides a very simple boot menu.

If, however, you need to build a payload that is currently not included in the coreboot build system:

First you need to download the source code for the payload of your choice and build it.

Each payload may have different build instructions and requirements, however most of the time a "make" command will suffice. Please check Payloads and the wiki page for the respective payload for details.

The result of this step should be an ELF file (e.g. filo.elf, or coreinfo.elf) which you can use with coreboot (see below).

Status

Intel_Native_Raminit has it's own status page.

Thanks for your interest in Lenovo X230 port.

Issues:

Badly seated RAM may prevent booting (not really a problem but coreboot is more suspicious to this than vendor BIOS)
Automatic screen rotation will not work on Windows 10 (X230T)
Buttons for screen rotation (X230T) and microphone mute don't work on Windows 10 (the first issue also causes the "Tablet Service" tsmservice.exe to hog one cpu core. It needs to be disabled.)
eGPU will not work on Windows 10 (ACPI BIOS ERROR bluescreen) - tested with a PE4C and NVidia GT730 attached via ExpressCard
UltraNav driver for the TrackPoint needs to be force-installed via device manager on Windows 10. It will only detect it as a PS/2 mouse otherwise.

This repository is a supplement for my x220 coreboot flash guide on YouTube.

While highly unlikely, it is possible to brick your x220 by trying to flash coreboot. I take no responsibility if that were to occur so do this at your own risk.

You can always re-flash your old BIOS. (Keep backups!)

I flashed my Lenovo x230 with Coreboot and documented how I did it.

This procedure has a good amount more steps than the Libreboot X200 Flash. Mainly it is due to having to build and configure Coreboot & friends.

I urge you to check the sites I list below and cross-reference them with my information. I may have some typos and the people who wrote them are probably a lot more knowledgeable than I am when it comes to this stuff. I am good at following directions and figuring things out, then documenting it.

Main bit of advice here is to read over the directions once before proceeding then once you start, go slowly!

Independent of hard drive or wifi on/off, Lenovo BIOS saves about 1.5W. It could be due to the screen backlight, it is a TN screen, so there may be some difference from the IPS. I didn’t recompile coreboot myself, but looking through the skulls settings, it isn’t clear if there are additional power savings that could be had from there.

Assuming that this is a large enough data set with the X230, it definitely consumes less power than the X200. On power hungry tasks, such as browsing, the X200 would regularly consume 15-20 W while the X230 rarely goes over 14W.

We release multiple different, but very similar images you can choose from. They all should work on all versions of the X230. These are the differences; (xxxxxxxxxx stands for random characters in the filename):

x230_coreboot_seabios_xxxxxxxxxx_top.rom includes the proprietary VGA BIOS from Intel which is non-free software. It is executed in "secure" mode.
x230_coreboot_seabios_free_xxxxxxxxxx_top.rom includes the VGA BIOS SeaVGABIOS which is free software. While technically more interesting, visually this is currently not as beautiful:
    The bootspash image is not shown.
    Early boot console messages (after your HDD's bootloader has started a kernel) might be missing.

The Lenovo X220 are great little machines from 2011 that still have plenty of life left in them. I picked up mine on Ebay for AUD $200 - 4GB of RAM, i5 CPU and 120 GB Samsung SSD. Excellent Linux support at a very reasonable price. I use one at work instead of the provided Macbook/Dell options, and it’s great.

It’s also upgradable - the battery, SSD and RAM are all easily accessed. The only shortcoming is the screen resolution at 1366x768. I use it as a portable desktop replacement, so it mostly lives in a dock ($25 on ebay), so the resolution is not a problem for me.

I spent some of the weekend getting it running with Coreboot instead of the stock BIOS.