X210 / X2100 Support

First time setting up

CMOS battery installation

The original X200/X201 CMOS battery is fully compatible with the X2100 motherboard. It’s installed next to the M.2 slot and should fit underneath the palmrest. It is a 2-pin CMOS battery (positive and negative terminal).

3K Panel BIOS settings

WARNING: Make sure the motherboard is unpowered (no battery and charger attached) when you install the panel and other peripherals. Please disconnect the power when you install any new hardware peripherals.

Adjusting this should help with panel glitches: BIOS > Advanced > CSM Settings and change video to UEFI.

BIOS adjustments

Check out this post for more info on performance and benchmarks.

PL1/PL2 adjustments

PLEASE DO NOT EXCEED 30W-35W FOR PL1 AS THERE HAS BEEN REPORTS OF FRIED MOSFET DUE TO HIGH PL1

BIOS > Advanced > Power & Performance > CPU – Power Management Control > Config TDP configuration
Change TDP Boot mode > Up
Scroll down to custom settings Up, adjust PL1 and PL2 and PL1 time window (Tau)

Undervolt

BIOS > Advanced > Overclocking Performance Menu
Change Overclock feature to enabled
Processor > Core/Ring
Change Voltage offset to the voltage you want (90 = 90mV)
Change Offset Prefix to negative for undervolt

CPU C1 & C3 state

BIOS > Advanced > Power & Performance
Enable C1 & C3 states
Enable demotion and promotion of both states

Drivers

Windows and Linux should automatically initialise the latest drivers.

Trackpoint

If trackpoint does not operate properly after sleep on Windows, force install the latest trackpoint driver in device manager:

Install driver
Open device manager and find the PS/2 mouse device
Right click, update driver, browse
“Let me select from a list of drivers already installed on the system”
Uncheck “List only compatible”
Change manufacturer from Microsoft to Lenovo and select the latest Synaptics drivers
Ignore warning about incompatible driver

If driver still does not work, try out 51nb recommended drivers.

X2100 Motherboard Installation Guide

V1.0

Please push the right portion of the 3K display connector towards the left after inserting it in. Pull with a pair of tweezers or your fingernails towards the left as it’s about 1 pin off.

Charger & Battery

This section only applies to 10th gen X2100 machines with stock BIOS only.

The motherboard doesn’t appear to play well with 4-cell batteries and aftermarket batteries. Please ONLY use ORIGINAL 6/9-cell batteries for this laptop.

The X2100 motherboard appears to draw a high current on boot and the recommended charging brick is a 90W brick. The machine appears to boot and charge fine on certain >60W chargers, including the stock Lenovo charger (both barrel and USB-C versions) provided the machine has a battery attached. There are some 65W chargers that don’t seem to charge properly on a high PL1. Please lower the PL1 of the CPU in the BIOS if the system don’t seem to charge properly.

BIOS

Introduction

BIOS updates in any machine refers to updating the BIOS EEPROM SPI chip present on the motherboard that typically looks like this and communicates with the main system over the SPI bus. The entire BIOS image is a single binary file, typically with an extension of .rom or .bin.

In order to flash in the BIOS, a flashing tool must be used. The X210 and X2100 provides the Intel FIT tool that can be used to flash the BIOS in one step. Flashrom on Linux can also be used to flash BIOS updates internally.

For the X210, all updates can be flashed via Windows or Linux.

For the X2100, all OFFICIAL BIOS updates can be flashed via Windows or Linux. For the patched EC, ONLY flash via Linux with Flashrom.

To flash the updated EC, flash the V25 BIOS first and then flash the patched EC.

Flashing on Windows

Instructions are ONLY for OFFICIAL BIOS, not for the UNOFFICIAL BIOS.
Download the BIOS package from below.
Install the driver MEIsetup from the BIOS package to flash the BIOS.
Right click update.bat and run with administrator.
Shutdown the machine, unplug battery and power adapter for 1min before booting it back up.

Flashing on Linux

Steps here are ONLY for OFFICIAL BIOS. Read on for patching the UNOFFICIAL BIOS.

For 8th gen X210, the stock flashrom utility present on most modern distros is compatible. Search online on how to install flashrom for your distro.

For 10th gen X2100, you need to compile flashrom from source as support for 10th gen Comet Lake was only added recently (as of Jan 2020). Clone the repo:

git clone https://review.coreboot.org/flashrom.git

cd into the cloned repo and read the README file. Install the required tools for compilation as specified in the README and run ./make.

Alternatively, the compiled Comet Lake compatible binary is available here. (SHA256: a2bf4c7d6c9cbbbe08e3a9b910896de4eb73840fe07d1c62b85c7c2a6559be59)

To update the BIOS on Linux, set iomem=relaxed in the boot arg and run the following command (only for OFFICIAL BIOS updates):

sudo flashrom -p internal -w fw.bin

Shutdown the machine, unplug battery and power adapter for 1min before booting it back up.

4th batch X2100 Comet Lake 10th gen BIOS

The OFFICIAL BIOS are the official updates from 51nb.

The patched EC by jwise is also provided here. It’s based on the latest V25 13 July 2020 BIOS. Only revert to previous BIOS if the latest BIOS has issues. The unofficial EC updates are explained here.

Release	Description	Download/Link
Initial release V15	OFFICIAL BIOS Factory BIOS update	Direct link (MD5: 96ff06e072349f0 f4398205ace47 2c62) Source
29 May 2020 V16	OFFICIAL BIOS Resolves charging issues Resolves sudden shutdown on battery Battery can now be fully charged	Direct link (MD5: 9d2fc278240c59 b3a0a0a033a1e 8f330) Source
2 June 2020 V21	OFFICIAL BIOS Resolves sleep issue Resolves internal mic issue	Direct link (MD5: b6179f2292e781 fc85095446d2f5 f70e) Source
13 July 2020 V25	OFFICIAL BIOS Resolves SD card issues Resolves charging issues	Direct link (MD5: 213ceb5b5a3cb 181e59f8f5affe3 b438) Source
4 September 2020 EC patched by jwise	UNOFFICIAL BIOS DO NOT FLASH ON WINDOWS ONLY FLASH THIS VIA FLASHROM Hotpatching / EC debugging support Backlight table that allows backlight to go as low as 1%. Correctly report battery state of charge on 9-cell and 4-cell batteries Report power consumption from battery (“time remaining on battery”) Fast charge 6-cell battery at 3A, and 9-cell battery at 4A. (X2100_V25 charged all batteries at 1.5A.) Limit input power to 80W while charging battery. (X2100_V25 consumed up to 100W, which could cause trouble for 90W chargers.) READ ON FOR MORE INFORMATION ON FLASHING	Direct link (SHA256: 17835d2c025a169b 02c2fdda90dd8ecdac 11d892fd4809b4e7 8ca69a6179791c) FN/CTRL swapped Direct link (SHA256: 39cabaad7 aea4d4729070f2aa3a58 837802e58515ccff1026 cda6df616a51ae3) Source

For the latest jwise patched EC, there is a risk of a corrupted ME after flashing on Windows. This is because the Intel FIT tool flashes the entire BIOS binary whereas flashrom can be used to ONLY flash the updated EC.

For those who wants to jump to the patched EC, please flash the updated EC on Linux with the following instructions:

Update to the latest V25 OFFICIAL BIOS following the instructions above.

2. Clone the latest flashrom or download the compiled flashrom that is provided above. Download the layout file here or create your own layout file with the following:

00400000:0040ffff ec

3. Flash ONLY the EC portion in with the following command:

sudo flashrom -p internal -l layout.txt -i ec -w bios.bin

4. Shutdown the machine, unplug battery and power adapter for 1min before booting it back up.

X210 Kaby Lake-R 8th gen BIOS

MD5 is different from my website than from 51nb as I recompressed the files to save space.

Date	Description	Download/Link
12 January 2019	OFFICIAL BIOS Added SLIC2.1 to the BIOS from 3 July 2018 Compatible with 2nd & 3rd batch X210	Direct link (MD5: 2e6c103c31 7bb707d45f 9a54404650a0) Source
Patched community BIOS Based on 12 January 2019	Patch notes here. Compatible with 2nd & 3rd batch X210	Direct link (SHA256: 2158 34c9c5400713f 8e1786deb449 776bbb86bb6a7 c91d9c86dc158 1ac64328c) Direct link FN/CTRL swapped (SHA256:7cd2dd0f d54ffe0685abce884 f7069fc8015cd3f26 c315318803685fd32 f5cdc) Source

Coreboot/EC

Coreboot has been ported to this machine by Matthew Garrett for 3rd batch and before X210 (8th gen Intel). It’s available here. He is also porting coreboot to the 10th gen X2100. In addition, a very helpful forum member vladisslav2011 has patched the embedded controller to fix a charging bug and both coreboot and the EC patch is compiled by harrykipper and available on his github repo here. The 10th gen EC was patched by jwise and is available here.