Marcus's Blog

Today I tried to flash a Lenovo T400. It was already laying around here for a while, waiting to be flashed with Libreboot. The reason was because I was a bit scared of the disassembling of the device. And yes, I was right. T60 is not that easy to fully disassemble but this one tops it.

It took me about 40 minutes to remove all screws and to free the mainboard in order to access the flash chip. Sadly I made a mistake while attaching the clip to the chip and but power to it. This lead to the flasher to be destroyed. Hopefully the board is still working but I have not tested it yet. I have already ordered a new flasher and hope I can continue liberating that device. I will keep you updated.

In the meantime, here you can get a view of the disassembled T400.

The Local Group Zurich has started a new project called Freie Computer where we offer Laptops that run fully Libre. That does not only apply to the wireless chipset which often requires blobs to run, but also the BIOS itself. We have decided to stick with the Libreboot BIOS which does not come with any code that cannot be inspected, modified and shared.

The Laptops are refurbished and flashed by us. Some devices like the Lenovo X60 or the T60 can be flashed directly from the OS for first flash. Others like the Lenovo X200 require an external flasher and the right clips for the flash chip. We have spend some money to buy this equipment so we can now flash all supported variants.

As we do not need to earn money with this project, we can offer the Laptops for CHF 100 – CHF 300, depending on the model. We currently ship to Switzerland, Germany and Austria. For further information, please take a look at our homepage (German only). You can use the contact form to get in touch with us.