A developer has documented the process of porting Lenovo's ThinkPad X61 to Coreboot, the open-source firmware project that replaces proprietary BIOS on supported machines.
The X61 is a nearly twenty-year-old laptop from Lenovo's 2007 lineup, built around Intel's Core 2 Duo platform and long past any official vendor support. The write-up covers the technical steps involved in getting Coreboot running on the board, from initial bring-up to a working system. Coreboot's ThinkPad support is already extensive — the X60, X200, T60, and several T-series machines all appear on the supported list — so the X61 fills an obvious gap in the X-series lineup.
For users still running X61 hardware, Coreboot support means a fully auditable firmware stack with no proprietary blobs controlling the boot process. The X61 predates the Intel Management Engine versions that have drawn sustained scrutiny from security researchers, making it attractive to libre software advocates who want every layer of the stack open and inspectable — and Coreboot is a prerequisite before projects like Libreboot can distribute ready-to-flash builds.
Old ThinkPads have a knack for staying useful longer than their specs suggest they should. A Coreboot port won't add RAM slots, but it gives X61 owners something most new laptops don't: boot firmware they can actually read.