#Coreboot

[mr-rogers-blood-stained-sweater]

Not sure where i would even go to talk about this so im posting it here to my tumblr.

I have this laptop, a lenovo thinkpad t420 ive been customizing mostly because of the funny weed number, but as it turns out this laptop has a few neat features and can often be bought used for under 50 usd. My first change was to, of course, upgrade the dual core sandybridge cpu to a quad core, so i ordered a 2760qm for under 20$ from ebay. The performance was good and it ran the thinkpad a little hot but it was acceptable, especially since the heatsink is only rated for 35w and the 2760qm is 45w.

My second change was to improve the cooling and I had a few original ideas. I opened up the laptop, swapped the stock heatsink for one with a gpu heatpipe that came with some t420's (but not this one obv). As part of my original idea I decided to do my own version of the "copper tape" mod where I used thermal tape instead of copper tape (this mod aims to use copper tape to join the gpu heatpipe to the main heatpipe or heatpipes). My thought process is that copper tape is probablly better than nothing but the adhesive adds an insulating layer decreasing its effectiveness and copper tape isnt mesnt to be used like this so why not just use a tape made to move heat instead? Thermal tape should in theory be much better than copper tape since its actually designed for this kind of work, with the downside being it will eventually dry out like thermal pads and paste. I didnt just experiment with this new mod though I also tried adding thermal pads to the underside of the gpu heatpipe where it would contact the gpu, the idea here being thick folded thermal pads would fill the gap well and drain heat from around the cpu through the board. I figured it would at least be better than covering the whole gpu pipe with tape. Finally i drilled some holes beneath the fan for added airflow using a design printed on paper and taped to the inside of the case as a stencil. While I had the laptop dissasembled I figured i might as well swap the cpu out one more time since i noticed an elitebook I got had a 2860qm, the fastest 45w sandybridge laptop cpu. I also applied some thermal grizzle duronaut thermal paste since its added thickness should fill the slightly larger space between the cpu die and heatsink better.

And finally the results were astounding, I can stream 1080p 60 fps video and the fans hardly make a sound, the laptop is unbeleivably cool and quiet for a 14 year old cpu. Even the passmark scores were incredible, its multicore score in windows was 5268 and 5168 in linux vs the average of 4559, over 10% increase with just a cooling mod! Its singlecore scores were even better though with a 1717 in windows and an 1826 in linux vs the average of 1562 almost a 20% boost in performance with just a cooling mod, no overclocking OR underclocking! This 2860qm is besting the 2960xm by a large amount and its in spitting distance of the next generatioms best chip the 3940xm!

Im not sure if i lucked out and found a golden superperformimg 2860qm or if i discovered a new goated cooling mod for the t420/t430, i corebooted the laptop the other day and i have a 3940xm on its way from china so im gonna figure it out. Dont worry if the 3940xm is somehow too hot for my mod i have a w520 to put it in and a 3632qm on its way too, although if it is just a golden 2860qm i might keep using it since its scores are also much higher than the average 3632qm!

Theres other mods you can do, and im doing most of them. I already installed a modded bios to remove the wifi whitelist and ordered a wifi 7 compatible adapter, the modded bios also allows faster ram so i ordered 2 8gb 1866mhz ddr3l sticks. I got an express card to dual usb 3.0 adapter, I also bought a w520 charger and cut out the wedges so it woukd fit the t420. I threw in a 2tb msata ssd, found an xl slice battery for cheap on ebay (2, 9 cell batterys installed, i get over 10 hours of hd youtube streaming!) And lastly i ordered a 1080p ips panel and an adapter board for it. This is a lovely laptop with one of the best keyboard ive used ever, and its performance is astoundingly good.

For someone not wanting to go as far as me you could get a used t420 or t430 for under 50$ a 256gb ssd for 10$ a cheap quad core for 20$ or less and a charger for around 14$. Thats a sturdy, fast, reliable, and genuinly cool laptop for under 100$. It is luck of the draw if you get a good batt or not though, of the three I got 1 9 cell was in perfect health another 9 cell was worn but usable and the 6 cell was mostly used up, add 20$ if you get unlucky with the battery and another 10$ for an 8gb ram stick if yours comes with 4gb or less.

[spilt-milke]

I paid for the whole cpu so I'm gonna use the whole cpu

(cleaned the dust off btw)

[manjaro-official]

corebooting a Chromebook and installing Linux on it feels like doing that surgery you have to do to pugs to unfuck their faces and let them breathe again. like I'm sorry we made you this way little buddy but hopefully I can save you

[debian-official]

chaining Discord trans girls to my Matrix radiator until stockholm syndrome kicks in and we'll spend the rest of our lives using fedi on corebooted linux laptops

[hackernewsrobot]

"It's not that bad" they told me – Coreboot

https://lilysthings.org/blog/coreboot/

[linux-opinions]

I'm running arch on my chromebook. I got coreboot on my chromebook and I'm running arch on that shit

based 👍

[connorscornor]

thinking about the time in sophomore year when my friend's mom (who worked for the school's tech department) let us have some old school chromebooks and we corebooted one and installed ubuntu

i still have it somewhere, i wanted to use it for another project but it's hella slow lmao. i might install a super lightweight distro on it sometime

[aitoolswhitehattoolbox]

Senior BIOS/UEFI/coreboot development Engineer

, Insyde, Phoenix BIOS, coreboot, EDKII) Hands on experience with hardware debugging tools like AMD HDT, ITP, Arium…, etc. Able to read and interpret hardware schematics. Knowledge of ACPI, USB, NVMe, SATA, PCIe, and other PC industry standards… Apply Now

[kaos-sverige]

Old ThinkPads Make Based Home Servers [Upgrades + Coreboot] #linux #FOSS #CachyOS #Nobara #EndeavourOS

[ericvanderburg]

Coreboot 25.03 Released With Support For 22 More Motherboards

http://i.securitythinkingcap.com/TJxwHJ

[whitechadwarden]

imagining going to one of those powerpoint parties except i use emacs org-beamer on a corebooted thinkpad but otherwise it's about the exact kind of topic you'd expect to be there like idk why one cat breed is better than another or some shit

[one-twink-angel]

In theory this could also be done to any system that uses socket P and a 1066mhz fsb as long as you can install some kind of coreboot :3

Meow meow meow

Purr purr

Meow

[alexa-play-despacito]

Hello! I wanted to ask if the way that you showed how to rip can also be used on Chrome book? I wanted to make bases to edit them.

I don't think so. I do it on a surface pro with Windows 10 natively installed.

I looked up how to execute Windows applications on Chromebooks real quick, and it seems that you could use Chrome's remote desktop, and that doesn't sound easy. You could also run Wine to run a support layer for Windows applications, which also doesn't sound easy, especially since the emulator itself didn't run on Windows 8. Finally, you could do a BIOS hack to allow you to install Windows onto the harddrive. I recently got a Chromebook off of ebay with coreboot that had replaced the proprietary BIOS but I can't test it because it has 4GB ram and 16GB diskspace xD it's amazing as a cheap Linux laptop but not good for Windows. Something to think about.

Those are three ways you could theoretically get the two necessary applications running on a Chromebook. It's probably too hard.

maybe the apps could run on a Linux-run virtual machine for Win 10 :thinking: I have not tried that. Like you could dual boot Linux and then use Virtualbox in setting up a ripping environment. Ooh a tutorial, I think you would want to try this. https://beebom.com/install-windows-10-chromebook/

[system76]

How System76 Uses Blockchain to Deliver Firmware Updates

The latest blockchain success stories pulsing throughout the media have largely surrounded its application in decentralized currency. But three engineers at System76 have found another use for blockchain that they hope will become a trend for more essential reasons: eliminating security vulnerabilities in computers relating to firmware updates.

In this blockchain system, firmware updates are delivered using a build server, which contains the new firmware, and a signing server, which verifies that the new firmware came from inside the company. The two servers are only connected via a serial cable. The lack of a network between the two means that one server cannot be accessed if entry is achieved through the other server.

Multiple build servers are set up alongside the primary build server. In order for a firmware update to receive a signature of verification, the firmware updates must be identical on all build servers. If even one build server contains a compromised firmware update, this update cannot proceed to signing and will not be delivered to our customers.

Firmware updates are often overlooked as a potential security vulnerability. We found that other vendors would use https without signing their updates, or that they would sign updates but only use http. With this oversight, an attacker could potentially duplicate the vendor’s website while pushing an older firmware update to the user that contains a vulnerability, and then exploit that vulnerability in the older version.

Using blockchain to distribute updates removes the threat of this kind of attack. Each version of signed firmware is kept as a block that is only viewable in a ledger. Only the most current firmware update in the chain can be sent to customers, ensuring that only new updates can be implemented.

The signing server adds an extra layer of complexity to the blockchain method. The signing key is kept in the server’s memory, so it can only be obtained when the server is on. Not to mention, an attacker would also have to create false firmware in every build server at the same time, which makes it highly improbable for a successful attack to occur.

In the event one does occur, the way to stop it would be to simply unplug the signing server or one of the build servers. Once that happens, the false firmware would be rejected by the system and archived as an old update, rendering that version inaccessible by the attacker.

The blockchain method of delivering firmware updates took a team of three engineers only a couple weeks to develop, but it has removed almost all existing vulnerabilities from the current system. In the near future, we hope to see other vendors follow suit in maintaining a secure environment for their users.

As we transition to coreboot, buildchain will provide guarantees of source to firmware that can be verified by users building the same firmware on their own.

[illuminarch]

Bytedance, dona do TikTok, intensifica uso de firmware de código aberto

[debian-official]

actually i take this back a good number of you would not only have illegally obtained schematics of here power circuitry but you'd also have her corebooted

robotgirl this robotgirl that do yall even know where her charging port is smh