It is believed that all or most T500 laptops are compatible. See notes about CPU compatibility and switchable graphics for potential incompatibilities.
There are two possible flash chip sizes for the R400: 4MiB (32Mbit) or 8MiB (64Mbit). This can be identified by the type of flash chip below the palmrest: 4MiB is SOIC-8, 8MiB is SOIC-16.
The T500 laptops come with the ME (and sometimes AMT in addition) before flashing libreboot. Libreboot disables and removes it by using a modified descriptor: see gm45_remove_me.html (contains notes, plus instructions)
Flashing instructions can be found at ../install/index.html#flashrom
The T500 is almost identical to the X200, code-wise. See x200.html.
See ../future/dumps/t500_x200_descriptor/descriptor_diff_t500_x200.txt and ../future/dumps/t500_x200_descriptor/gbe_diff_t500_x200.txt
The patches above are based on the output from ich9deblob on a factory.rom image dumped from the T500
with a SOIC-8 4MiB flash chip. The patch re-creates the X200 descriptor/gbe source, so the commands were
something like:
$ diff -u t500gbe x200gbe
$ diff -u t500descriptor x200descriptor
ME VSCC table is in a different place and a different size on the T500. Libreboot disables and removes the ME anyway, so it doesn't matter.
The very same descriptor/gbe used on the X200 (generated by ich9gen) was re-used on the T500, and it still worked.
The coreboot wiki shows how to collect various logs useful in porting to new boards. Following are outputs from the T500:
Copyright © 2015 Francis Rowe <info@gluglug.org.uk>
This document is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License and all future versions.
A copy of the license can be found at ../license.txt.
This document is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See ../license.txt for more information.