Hi all,
I have a Thinkpad X1 yoga (1st gen 20FR). I bought the device recently on an auction. All was working fine but I noticed that there was a supervisor password on the BIOS.
After reading online (unfortunately not too well), I read that I could short the SCL and SDA pin while the laptop was booting, in order to remove that password. I tried this a few times without success. The last attempt, I must've done something wrong (my guess is that I shorted pin 6 and 7 or maybe even 8).
Now my device is in the state where it doesn't show anything on the screen, it starts, the fan starts spinning but nothing more than that.
No other components are damages (afaik) but it looks like the BIOS is corrupt.
What would be my options in this situation?
- Can I buy a new BIOS chip, pre-flashed for my model (20FR)? From what I read this will not work as the device was previously password protected (something with a checksum that won't match). I tried to contact a few sellers on eBay but none of them seems to give a clear reply.
If this gets my device back to a working one, even with the supervisor password still present, that would be fine for me.
- Can I unsolder the BIOS chip and apply the steps to unlock the BIOS (using the autopatcher). In this case I worry that I won't be able to use the current BIOS chip contents. Is that something I can check and fix?
- Any other options I'm forgetting about?
Soldering is not a problem and I've done PIC programming long time ago so I'd probably figure that out as well. (I was thinking about buying a programmer for some time anyway).
Thanks a lot for your time on this.
I have a Thinkpad X1 yoga (1st gen 20FR). I bought the device recently on an auction. All was working fine but I noticed that there was a supervisor password on the BIOS.
After reading online (unfortunately not too well), I read that I could short the SCL and SDA pin while the laptop was booting, in order to remove that password. I tried this a few times without success. The last attempt, I must've done something wrong (my guess is that I shorted pin 6 and 7 or maybe even 8).
Now my device is in the state where it doesn't show anything on the screen, it starts, the fan starts spinning but nothing more than that.
No other components are damages (afaik) but it looks like the BIOS is corrupt.
What would be my options in this situation?
- Can I buy a new BIOS chip, pre-flashed for my model (20FR)? From what I read this will not work as the device was previously password protected (something with a checksum that won't match). I tried to contact a few sellers on eBay but none of them seems to give a clear reply.
If this gets my device back to a working one, even with the supervisor password still present, that would be fine for me.
- Can I unsolder the BIOS chip and apply the steps to unlock the BIOS (using the autopatcher). In this case I worry that I won't be able to use the current BIOS chip contents. Is that something I can check and fix?
- Any other options I'm forgetting about?
Soldering is not a problem and I've done PIC programming long time ago so I'd probably figure that out as well. (I was thinking about buying a programmer for some time anyway).
Thanks a lot for your time on this.
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