Coreboot Adds Support For The Lenovo ThinkPad T530

[MartinN]

How "dangerous" is it to install Coreboot?
I'd never try to install this on a shiny new notebook.
I guess the chance to brick it is rather high...

BTW, is it straightforward to go back to the stock BIOS?

Not sure.. it looks trivial to flash tho, on the T440. Besides, this is Phoronix, we thrive on risk here . No Joe Sixpacks around here...

[Adarion]

How "dangerous" is it to install Coreboot?
I'd never try to install this on a shiny new notebook.
I guess the chance to brick it is rather high...
BTW, is it straightforward to go back to the stock BIOS?

As people said, if flashrom works on the machine you can go back (unless bricked). I highly recommend to check if coreboot supports your machine (in case of laptops and the like). It is definitely wise to buy some empty chips that are compatible. Problems here are they need to work with flashrom (as well as SuperIO and the likes) and should be of the same format (shape, pins, connection, electric) as your original BIOS chip. Preferably the very same model. Then you might put your original BIOS into one of them to have a go-back solution at hand. Try if it works, if yes, fine, you can start experimenting with coreboot now.
In case the BIOS chip is soldered on the mainboard (and if you aren't good at soldering) you have only one try. So in that case you really better watch it. Also, if something fails in such a case don't turn off the machine, try to ask coreboot people for help. Maybe you can still reflash your chip.
But I'd avoid flashing soldered things unless I am 100% sure it works.
Everything that is socketed should be much easier since these chips are not really expensive and you can exchange them in need.

[Adarion]

Unfortunately, it seems to be the direction that x86 and ARM are moving to.

Thanks and OMG. Not ARM, too. I guess this is how Microsoft's un-disableable SecureBoot on ARM came into play?
And ARM was once supposed to be RISC, and somehow RISC design seems opposed to me to complex firmware. I don't want to say you couldn't or shouldn't do complex things on RISC machines but I thought the design principle was to keep it light and with better overview.

Out of interest: Does anybody have infos on how ARM things worked in the past? I have / had this AI touchbook featuring a beagleboard with a TI something. I wonder what firmware there was to boot the operating system (or the OS kernel bootloader). Was there any standard by ARM or did implementers all cook their own soup?

[curaga]

Every implementer did their own crap. Much hardcoding. Though I can't speak for pre-arm9 things.