Thinkpads Forum

I have a few Thinkpads of this generation lying around, including 2 T410s and 2 T510 thinkpads. I also have a dell latitude e6410 (it uses the same processor as these thinkpads) and after doing some research, I saw that you could put a quad core or extreme edition processor in these laptops, as long as they had dedicated graphics (vid explaining it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ltuoh03VVM)

I've seen a few threads on this forum explaining that it wasn't possible to do the same in the T510 or T410, but I still tried it for myself. No luck. After yet more researching I came across this abandoned thread on Bios-Mods.com https://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread- ... ported-CPU

So it would seem that the only thing stopping the use of these CPUs is the bios not supporting them, at least on T510 and T410 motherboards with dedicated graphics. The reason I'd like to pursue this is because the this generation is locked at 8 GB of ram and dual core processors which limit modern functionality quite a bit. Quad core processors not only support 16 GB of ram, but they're better for modern workloads and are actually significantly cheaper than the best possible processor you can get for these laptops (i7 640m).

So I request help. I've never done a bios mod before, Where do I start? what programs do I need to extract the bios and what programs should I use to explore and modify it once I have a bios file to play with? I could spend my time digging around on the Bios Mod forums, but they're very disorganized and rather unhelpful. I know I'm probably going to mess up a bit, so I plan on buying a chip programmer so that I can flash the bios onto the motherboard directly if I end up bricking it.

Any help is appreciated, but especially that from forum members experienced in bios modding.

The T410s you mentioned has a soldered CPU, so forget about those.
And rather than mess with the BIOS to try and achieve the most likely impossible, why don't you just dump Windows?
Those Thinkpads work very well under Linux, even with 'only' 8GB RAM and dual-core CPUs.

Not even coreboot (which is easier to muck around with in terms of adding CPU support) mentions quad-core support on the T410 and T510, so there's that. Then again, no one's stopping you from trying it.

RealBlackStuff wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 05, 2021 3:19 am

The T410s you mentioned has a soldered CPU, so forget about those.

I meant that I had 2 T410 thinkpads, not T410s thinkpads. oh well. I actually do use debian on my much older x41, but I'm more focused on bringing new life and functionality to a generation of Thinkpad that I see as kind of overlooked.

axur-delmeria wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 05, 2021 5:01 am

Not even coreboot (which is easier to muck around with in terms of adding CPU support) mentions quad-core support on the T410 and T510, so there's that. Then again, no one's stopping you from trying it.

I haven't even thought of coreboot, thank you for mentioning it. I think I will go with modifying the coreboot rom instead, as I'm pretty sure that coreboot comes with the whitelist disabled? And if I can get in touch with some of the developers of that rom I can get some advice from them too.

Coreboot doesn't have any whitelist.

IMO the T410 and T510 are overlooked because the subsequent models (T420 and T520) blew them out of the water and into irrelevance.

- better processor performance and temperature
- better RAM compatibility and greater max RAM
- better integrated graphics
- mSATA SSD support

and so forth.

The 1st gen i7 Clarksfield quads are fundamentally different than the Arrandale duals.

Even W510 which had dual and quad models used different motherboards for whichever CPU. Quad mobo was for quads, had 4 RAM slots, and supports up to 32GB RAM; dual mobo was for duals, had 2 RAM slots, and supports up to 8GB RAM.

This is because Clarksfield uses a new memory controller integrated with the CPU die, akin to subsequent generations, but without integrated graphics, so it must be paired with a dedicated GPU; while Arrandale does not have the new memory controller or make use of it, it relies on an older memory controller pretty much the same as the old Northbridge, which only supports stick sizes of up to 4GB, and at most two of them, so 8GB is the limit, but it does have integrated graphics (Intel HD, 5700MHD, whatever)