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Thinkpad T14 (AMD) Gen1

Lenovo Thinkpad T14 (AMD) Gen 1⚑

Usage⚑

BIOS upgrade⚑

There are several ways of upgrading the BIOS of this laptop. One of them is using fwupdate, other is running an executable from winbugs and the last one is from a bootable USB.

Keep in mind that the upgrades might require the laptop to be plugged to a power supply and/or have a level of charge over 50%, 80%...

Bootable USB⚑

First, create the bootable USB:

  1. Download the BIOS update (Bootable CD) from lenovo.
  2. Check the integrity of the downloaded file with sha256sum {downloaded_file}
  3. Extract the bootable image: 
    geteltorito -o t14.img {downloaded_file}
  4. Flash the extracted image to an usb: 
    dd if=t14.img of=/dev/sdX
  5. Reboot, interrupt the boot (press enter), press F12 and select the USB as the boot device.
  6. Follow the on-screen instructions.

Issues⚑

Flashing colors on the LCD screen⚑

TL;DR: power off the laptop and unplug it from the AC adapter and press the emergency-reset button located in the bottom case.

I opened my laptop, which was suspended, and the screen was flashing in different colors as shown on this video

I panicked a bit and look the problem up, finding only this thread where they suggested reinstalling the BIOS by using an external screen. I've tried to do so by connecting the laptop to the ThinkPad USB-C Dock Gen 2 but the screens showed no output.

Before trying anything else, I decided to go for the ol' reliable "have you tried turning it off and on again". So I opened the bottom case, which is a bit annoying but easily doable, as shown on the following video

Then, I unplugged the battery and the BIOS button battery and replugged them again. I checked that it worked properly before putting back the bottom case.

But then, I've learned that Thinkpads with a non-removable battery generally have a "emergency-reset hole", which I could have just pressed instead of opening the laptop xD There is more information about it in the T14 Gen 1 and P14s Gen 1 Hardware Maintenance Manual.

Sticky touchpad after suspend⚑

After suspension, the touchpad behaves weird: can't scroll, and acts as if you were clicking and dragging (sticky). The TrackPoint works correctly though.

A first solution was to disable it and just use the TrackPoint. This is done as follows:

xinput list # look for SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad
xinput set-prop <number> "Device Enabled" 0

This allows you to use the computer without the sticky mouse annoyance but doesn't actually solve the problem. For that, the solution that worked for me is removing the psmouse kernel module before suspending and then reloading it after waking up from suspension. You can first try to do this manualy and then if it works create this script in /lib/systemd/system-sleep/psmouse:

#!/bin/sh

case $1/$2 in
  pre/*)
    echo "Going to $2..."
    modprobe -r psmouse
    ;;
  post/*)
    echo "Waking up from $2..."
    sleep 2
    modprobe psmouse
    ;;
esac