Yves-Alexis Perez <cor...@debian.org> writes:
> On 18/01/2010 21:28, jida...@jidanni.org wrote:
>
>> WARNING: Outdated ThinkPad BIOS/EC firmware
>> WARNING: This firmware may be missing critical bug fixes and/or important
>> features
>>
>> Perhaps it could mention what it believes the current versions should
>> be, so we can check the IBM website before decide we have send the unit
>> back to IBM to get whatever it is that is bothering it updated (as we
>> Linux users can't update the BIOS ourselves.)
>>
>> Also it could mention perhaps some URLs on where it got its information
>> about what is current from.
This is all very well documented in drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.c:
/*
* The changelogs would let us track down the exact
* reason, but it is just too much of a pain to track
* it. We only list BIOSes that are either really
* broken, or really stable to begin with, so it is
* best if the user upgrades the firmware anyway.
*/
printk(TPACPI_WARN
"WARNING: Outdated ThinkPad BIOS/EC firmware\n");
printk(TPACPI_WARN
"WARNING: This firmware may be missing critical bug "
"fixes and/or important features\n");
}
and
/*
* Table of recommended minimum BIOS versions
*
* Reasons for listing:
* 1. Stable BIOS, listed because the unknown ammount of
* bugs and bad ACPI behaviour on older versions
*
* 2. BIOS or EC fw with known bugs that trigger on Linux
*
* 3. BIOS with known reduced functionality in older versions
*
* We recommend the latest BIOS and EC version.
* We only support the latest BIOS and EC fw version as a rule.
*
* Sources: IBM ThinkPad Public Web Documents (update changelogs),
* Information from users in ThinkWiki
*
* WARNING: we use this table also to detect that the machine is
* a ThinkPad in some cases, so don't remove entries lightly.
*/
Note especially the
* We recommend the latest BIOS and EC version.
* We only support the latest BIOS and EC fw version as a rule.
> I'm not sure about that particular ThinkPad, but I definitely can update
> my T61 bios. Lenovo provides bootable cd iso for them.
They don't for the older ThinkPads, but they do provide bootable floppy
images which are just as good (don't know if the R50e has a floppy
drive, but you can always convert the floppy image to an el-torito CD or
to a USB stick if necessary).
The only problem with the Lenovo floppies is that they are embedded in a
floppy write utility for DOS, Windows or OS/2. But there is a neat
Linux trick which I used with a Thinkpad T42: Download the "Non-Diskette"
version from Lenovo and unpack it with "cabextract" (from the Debian
package with the same name). The .exe contains a raw bootable floppy
image which can be dd'ed to a floppy or used on an el-torito CD or
whatever. The rest of the files are just the Windows utilites which you
don't need.
E.g:
bj...@nemi:/tmp$ wget
http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/1wuj25us.exe
--2010-01-19 10:48:21--
http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/1wuj25us.exe
Resolving download.lenovo.com... 92.122.64.27
Connecting to download.lenovo.com|92.122.64.27|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1355800 (1.3M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: `1wuj25us.exe'
100%[==========================================================================================>]
1,355,800 173K/s in 7.2s
2010-01-19 10:48:30 (183 KB/s) - `1wuj25us.exe' saved [1355800/1355800]
bj...@nemi:/tmp$ cabextract 1wuj25us.exe
1wuj25us.exe: library not compiled to support large files.
1wuj25us.exe: library not compiled to support large files.
Extracting cabinet: 1wuj25us.exe
extracting 1WUJ25US.IMG
extracting IBMTPI.XML
extracting BIOSUPTP.EXE
extracting doboot.exe
extracting DOSBOOT.COM
extracting dosboot.sys
extracting DOSBOOT.vxd
extracting DOSBOOT2.COM
extracting dosboot2.sys
extracting dosboot3.COM
extracting eflashas.sys
All done, no errors.
bj...@nemi:/tmp$ ls -l 1WUJ25US.IMG
-rw-r--r-- 1 bjorn bjorn 1474560 2006-12-11 02:10 1WUJ25US.IMG
bj...@nemi:/tmp$ file 1WUJ25US.IMG
1WUJ25US.IMG: DOS floppy 1440k, x86 hard disk boot sector
Follow the Lenovo instructions after creating the floppy or CD images.
Bjørn
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