21–30 of 58 posts
I have an x61 myself, bought it last year to add to my Thinkpad collection. I haven't done much besides put in some real to verify it actually works. And suggestions on an OS?
Windows 98SE. Port any drivers you need with AI. Only half-serious...
Win2000 or WinXP would be a better choice due to numerous reasons though. Win2K with an SSD is absolutely going to fly on that thing.
Kudos for getting this done! Sad that free BIOSes are so far behind modern hardware, but this is very necessary work.
afaik all modern x86 chromebooks ship with coreboot based firmware
these machines are amazing, but sadly they're showing signs of age these days. mine's already kinda unusable due to dim CCFL backlight and fan grinding noise.
Sure, USA citizens are not allowed to reverse engineer ...yes we are? After all, that's how the whole IBM PC-compatible industry started. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Technologies#Cloning_t... AFAIK the later Thinkpads including this one uses a Phoenix BIOS, so it's amusing to see the circularity of how things turned out; and continuing on that path, Phoenix sold its BIOS business to Lenovo a little earlier…
Yeah, it's pretty cut and dry. Constitutionally, only the federal government is allowed to regulate intellectual property, so re-implementing anything that isn't protected by a trademark, copyright, or patent is fair game, and trademarks don't cover design, copyright only covers media, and patents expire in 20 tears. Even the clean-room isolation that Phoenix went through isn't legally required, it just makes nuisanc…
It turns out that's not exactly the case! See, e.g., Goldstein v. California, 412 U.S. 546 (1973). Before 1978, state (often common law) copyright used to cover a lot of pre-publication works, and until 2018 (when the federal law was amended) state copyright law covered pre-1972 sound recordings, and state copyright still covers obscure things like post-mortem moral rights in visual art or rights to "unfixed" works. See 1 Nimmer on Copyright §§ A.02 & 2.02. Other forms of intellectual property (trade secrets, rights of publicity) remain mostly creatures of state law, and some states also have trademark systems.
Kudos for getting this done! Sad that free BIOSes are so far behind modern hardware, but this is very necessary work.
i don't think it's really "far behind", it just can't run on hardwares that require manufacturer keys (e.g. intel bootguard) afaik all modern x86 chromebooks ship with coreboot based firmware
awesome! hopefully T61 can also get some support soon.. these machines are amazing, but sadly they're showing signs of age these days. mine's already kinda unusable due to dim CCFL backlight and fan grinding noise.
Kudos for getting this done! Sad that free BIOSes are so far behind modern hardware, but this is very necessary work.
In early 2018, before I had children and with much, MUCH more free time, I bought a used X61, plus a used X60 1400x1050 LCD, a new backlight, new internal stereo speakers, a new mainboard with an Intel Core i7-5600U from 51NB, plus new SSD, 32 GB RAM, and the original IBM logo of a X60 which was replaced by a Lenovo logo on my chassis. It's the exact same setup as mentioned here [0], except that I built it myself fro…
"Vibe reverse engineering" yep, was talking with a designer friend just yesterday who vibe coded a driver for his unsupported Wacom. He's not a developer but his pen tablet now works. It seems quite useful and efficient for this kind of work with a well established process (plug, get connectivity, do something, get data, do something else, get other data, transform that data (e.g. 0..1 mapped to a well defined resolu…
Quite a different message than yours.
Kudos for getting this done! Sad that free BIOSes are so far behind modern hardware, but this is very necessary work.
You can get much more modern hardware with firmware. This was mostly an expirement to see how good LLM are at reverse engineering. Given that it went well I think making fully free (without Intel) x86-side firmware is possible.
[The following question is only valid if you meant "free" as in "GPL/BSD"]
Is it completely clear that LLM code is considered "clean room" and won't leak copyrighted code?