In November 2021 I decided to upgrade from my Lenovo X230 after over 9 years of service to a Lenovo ThinkPad P14s G2 AMD. After years of heavy usage the X230 was pretty much worn down, resulting in an keyboard with missing keys, small damages to the display and broken plastic parts. Time to rebuild it as a Frankenpad!
Since the X230 is not my primary notebook anymore, I am able to do all the mods I hesitated to do, when I depended on it. I’m going to update this page once in a while.
Implemented mods
- Classic X220 keyboard (ANSI) with modified firmware.
- Flashing the BIOS chip with coreboot
- Mini PCIe WiFi 6E card (AXE3000H)
Planned mods
- Full HD panel LG LP125WF4-SPB1 with mod board by a.gain (阿甘)
- Not a mod, but also interesting: Installing a Gentoo Linux for a fully customized experience.
Write-up
X220 keyboard mod
There are multiple sources on the internet describing the X220 keyboard mod, which is pretty straightforward. I decided to flash the firmware of the embedded controller, because it only works with the Lenovo BIOS. Since I wanted to flash coreboot it was my last change to do so.
Coreboot
There are lots of sometimes even contradictory guides on how to flash coreboot on the X230. So I think it might be useful to others to describe how I flashed it using a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B. I am going to publish a guide in the future!