Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Adding a USB port to the ThinkPad X1 Nano (the hard way)

jcs.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 75 posts

Re: Adding a USB port to the ThinkPad X1 Nano (the hard way)

#11

Post by kmeisthax »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #7
utensil4778 wrote: post #6

I had to do a similar thing with my T530. I wanted to upgrade to a WiFi 6+Bluetooth card. The built in Bluetooth adapter is very old, I think v4.2. It's also a finicky module with a mezzanine connector, and it's nestled deeply into the internal magnesium frame so the range is abysmal. I reflashed the BIOS to kill the whitelist, but I'm left with a bigger problem. The WiFi slot offers PCI, but not USB. The WWAN slot h…

>I reflashed the BIOS to kill the whitelist Still boggles my mind that people praise ThinkPads as an option for those looking for repairability and upgradability while casually talking about the built-in BIOS whitelist designed to block all that. To me that means an instant black ball. It's cool hackers are patching this out, but this anti-consumer feature should not be present in the first place in something people…

I have to wonder if there's a project for patching out this stupid, blatantly anticompetitive restriction from old ThinkPad firmwares. Especially with how many techies swear by these things.

Re: Adding a USB port to the ThinkPad X1 Nano (the hard way)

#12

Post by dehugger »

kmeisthax wrote: post #11
Rinzler89 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I reflashed the BIOS to kill the whitelist Still boggles my mind that people praise ThinkPads as an option for those looking for repairability and upgradability while casually talking about the built-in BIOS whitelist designed to block all that. To me that means an instant black ball. It's cool hackers are patching this out, but this anti-consumer feature should not be present in the first place in something people…

I have to wonder if there's a project for patching out this stupid, blatantly anticompetitive restriction from old ThinkPad firmwares. Especially with how many techies swear by these things.

Yes, there is... that is literally what the GP did.

Re: Adding a USB port to the ThinkPad X1 Nano (the hard way)

#14

Post by numpad0 »

utensil4778 wrote: post #4
freedomben wrote: post #2

Amazing adventure and great write up! It reads like an adventure novel :-) > Unfortunately, Lenovo continues to implement a stupid network card whitelist that IBM started over 20 years ago on its ThinkPad models. If the card in the M.2 slot is not advertising a known PCI vendor and product ID in the whitelist contained in the BIOS (now UEFI firmware), the ThinkPad will refuse to boot. Why?? Are there legitimate reaso…

The usual line that Lenovo gives is that this is for FCC reasons. The argument goes that the laptop is FCC certified as an entire unit, and changing the WiFi card technically invalidates this. This is quite plainly nonsense. Every other manufacturer allows WiFi adapter replacements because every module on the market must be individually FCC certified. Technically, the claim does make sense under a creative interpreta…

Other manufacturers such as Dell and HP do in fact implement BIOS whitelist. I think this is the reason why Internet listings of Wi-Fi cards are advertised with brand names that the cards are intended for.

Re: Adding a USB port to the ThinkPad X1 Nano (the hard way)

#15

Post by nemosaltat »

utensil4778 wrote: post #4
freedomben wrote: post #2

Amazing adventure and great write up! It reads like an adventure novel :-) > Unfortunately, Lenovo continues to implement a stupid network card whitelist that IBM started over 20 years ago on its ThinkPad models. If the card in the M.2 slot is not advertising a known PCI vendor and product ID in the whitelist contained in the BIOS (now UEFI firmware), the ThinkPad will refuse to boot. Why?? Are there legitimate reaso…

The usual line that Lenovo gives is that this is for FCC reasons. The argument goes that the laptop is FCC certified as an entire unit, and changing the WiFi card technically invalidates this. This is quite plainly nonsense. Every other manufacturer allows WiFi adapter replacements because every module on the market must be individually FCC certified. Technically, the claim does make sense under a creative interpreta…

If that sounds silly, while working in commercial construction in Los Angeles, we encountered pushback for placing UL-listed devices in a UL-listed enclosure. The city determined that to be a “new assembly” and required UL listing for the entire unit. UL has a category for this situation; the enclosure is “UL recognized” because all of the devices and the enclosure are UL-listed. Their proposed solution, which UL was happy to oblige, was to come and field-inspect the installed units and have them certified in situ, at our (significant) expense, of course.

Re: Adding a USB port to the ThinkPad X1 Nano (the hard way)

#16

Post by user_7832 »

gzalo wrote: post #13

I don't get the point of designing and building a 3.3 to 5v booster instead of just wiring a cable to one of the existing USB C vbus 5v pins? Am I missing something?

If I understand right, the existing USB ports are only USB-C. I'm not sure of what implementation the Nano has but if it supports USB-PD it may be able to output up to 20V if the "main" connected device asks for it.

Re: Adding a USB port to the ThinkPad X1 Nano (the hard way)

#17

Post by numpad0 »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #7
utensil4778 wrote: post #6

I had to do a similar thing with my T530. I wanted to upgrade to a WiFi 6+Bluetooth card. The built in Bluetooth adapter is very old, I think v4.2. It's also a finicky module with a mezzanine connector, and it's nestled deeply into the internal magnesium frame so the range is abysmal. I reflashed the BIOS to kill the whitelist, but I'm left with a bigger problem. The WiFi slot offers PCI, but not USB. The WWAN slot h…

>I reflashed the BIOS to kill the whitelist Still boggles my mind that people praise ThinkPads as an option for those looking for repairability and upgradability while casually talking about the built-in BIOS whitelist designed to block all that. To me that means an instant black ball. It's cool hackers are patching this out, but this anti-consumer feature should not be present in the first place in something people…

Lots of other laptops has the same whitelist annoyance, and are harder to tinker with. Lenovo is still nearly the least cumbersome even with this.

Sony laptops were the worst: Sony has elitist culture when it comes to miniaturization and engineering excellence, which manifests as unsolderable gapless tiny solder pads in case with PCBs. Fujitsu is better: they love to get creative with their own testing criteria that results in excessively hot laptops that relies on keyboard typing surfaces as heatsinks. Toshiba designers seem to be smart and rational people who understands that no one cares if they double sided everything. Dell is just thick and heavy while not particularly durable and occasionally being annoying with proprietary accessories. HP seem to have every hardware and software imported into their ERP and that can be annoying sometimes like having HP-only bugs.

ThinkPads don't have that kinds of things. They note on Hardware Maintenance Manual(HMM) that all removed screws must be discarded and replaced with their beautiful urethane coated and thread locked screws, and they still haven't made value of ~220 as default for `/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity`, and that's it.

Re: Adding a USB port to the ThinkPad X1 Nano (the hard way)

#18

Post by jwells89 »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #7
utensil4778 wrote: post #6

I had to do a similar thing with my T530. I wanted to upgrade to a WiFi 6+Bluetooth card. The built in Bluetooth adapter is very old, I think v4.2. It's also a finicky module with a mezzanine connector, and it's nestled deeply into the internal magnesium frame so the range is abysmal. I reflashed the BIOS to kill the whitelist, but I'm left with a bigger problem. The WiFi slot offers PCI, but not USB. The WWAN slot h…

>I reflashed the BIOS to kill the whitelist Still boggles my mind that people praise ThinkPads as an option for those looking for repairability and upgradability while casually talking about the built-in BIOS whitelist designed to block all that. To me that means an instant black ball. It's cool hackers are patching this out, but this anti-consumer feature should not be present in the first place in something people…

I don't know if Dell continued this in newer models, but I was pleasantly surprised by the versatility of the WWAN slot in my circa-2008 Precision workstation laptop.

No BIOS whitelist, antenna connectors that run up into the screen where the front bezel is plastic (allowing good reception), and plenty of room for an adapter. Grabbed a cheap adapter and AX210 card and stuck them in there and it all just works and so now it's equipped with BT and wifi better than is in my 13-years-newer X1 Nano.

Re: Adding a USB port to the ThinkPad X1 Nano (the hard way)

#19

Post by dcminter »

I encountered the same mpcie card whitelist nuisance on the Lenovo m73 Tiny. Turns out there that you can just update the serial and model number to "INVALID" and it will then let you boot with a non-whitelisted device, albeit with an angry beep and warning message.

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/lx7d8f/pfsense_len...

Apparently it's possible to add the pcie device identifier to the whitelist, but it looks like a very fiddly process and I didn't really care about the minor issues resulting from the cruder approach:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/dcf0lw/comment/fbpy...

No idea if any of that works on the X1 Nano, but you never know.

Post reply on HN