coreboot(1) coreboot coreboot(1)

today i will demonstrate a fun and easy way to coreboot your thinkpad t430s (or other xx30 series thinkpad) without a hardware bios flasher thingy. if you don't have a thinkpad t430s and instead have another xx30 series pad, and are also willing to (temporarily) install windows, i reccomend you skip this guide and just use ivprep to downgrade your bios version, 1vyrain to do the flashing, and skulls for a prebuilt coreboot image. if you however do not want to install or windows, or do not have a non-t430s xx30 model, this may be helpful to you, so continue reading.

to software flash coreboot, you need to be on bios 2.59 or earlier. if you already have that, skip this step. if youre not, you need to downgrade the bios. to downgrade the bios, you can use ivprep , but it only works on windows. if you don't want to do that, you can get the DOSFLASH.EXE file and the FL2 into a freeDOS iso and flash the old bios that way.

there is no prebuilt coreboot rom for the thinkpad T430s. if you are on T430, or other xx30 model, thereis a project called skulls which should work, and you can use that. I had to build my own coreboot image for the T430s, and if you want to use mine you can get it here.

once you have the rom you need, you need to flash it. for this we will use 1vyrain , which is basically just a debian 10 iso with a script, but hey its convienient. download the iso, and then on a different computer serve your rom locally on http (python makes this easy, python -m http.server 8000). then just go through the 1vyrain steps, and when it prompts you for a custom rom, type the url of the rom you are serving. after a bit of hoping and praying, it should be done.

May 22, 2026 shrub