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hamishcoleman / thinkpad-ec

Infrastructure for examining and patching Thinkpad embedded controller firmware
GNU General Public License v2.0
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Patched EC broke charger detection on T430, can't revert to old EC #243

Closed Auberginezz closed 11 months ago

Auberginezz commented 11 months ago

I'm in a bit of a pickle here, with a bizarre issue.

I built and flashed the patched T430 EC firmware seemingly without issue, but now my T430 does not detect when it's plugged into power.

It always prefers to draw power from the battery, even when it's connected to the charger. The battery won't charge. If I remove the battery, the laptop dies. But I can leave the battery uninstalled and power on again from the charger. If I plug the battery in after powering on from the charger, it reverts to just using the battery and ignoring the charger again. Strangely, it charges fine while in sleep mode.

The real issue here is that the BIOS will not finalise a new EC flash to revert to the original EC, because it can't detect both the battery and charger even when both are connected. So I seem to be stuck with a buggy EC.

I originally flashed the patched EC with only the keyboard patch, but then re-flashed the EC with the keyboard+battery patch. I swapped between stock and 1vyrain BIOS too, I'm not exactly sure where in the process the charger detection broke (since it wasn't something I was looking out for). The second EC flash may not have even worked, but I believe it did. I'm using an OEM battery FWIW.

Are there any other methods for flashing the EC? Any ways to bypass the BIOS battery/charger checks? Has anyone else ran into this issue? Cheers!

Auberginezz commented 11 months ago

I figured out what the cause of my problem was, and now I feel pretty silly! I was using one of my 65w chargers, when I should've been using my 90w charger! Turns out this wasn't an issue with the EC at all, my apologies.