Downgrade BIOS on thinkpad t530

My Thinkpad T530 currently have a BIOS

BIOS ID: 2.77 (G4ETB7WW)
ECP ID: 1.14 (G4HT40WW)
BIOS date: 2018-03-08

One of the problems with this BIOS is that it has a white-list of batteries it will support, and this does not include batteries for T420/T520 which otherwise are identical, so I need to downgrade the BIOS, so I can use:

 d888                                      d8b          
d8888                                      Y8P          
  888                                                   
  888   888  888 888  888 888d888  8888b.  888 88888b.  
  888   888  888 888  888 888P"       "88b 888 888 "88b 
  888   Y88  88P 888  888 888     .d888888 888 888  888 
  888    Y8bd8P  Y88b 888 888     888  888 888 888  888 
8888888   Y88P    "Y88888 888     "Y888888 888 888  888 
                      888                               
                 Y8b d88P                               
                  "Y88P"

According to the above GitHub site it is ncessary to downgrade the T530-BIOS to version 2.60, it also have a recipe for how to do it.

BIOS ID: 2.60 (G4ETA0WW)
ECP ID: 1.13 (G4HT39WW)
BIOS date: 2014-03-31
BIOS Update Utility (Windows): g4uj23us.exe g4uj23us.txt
BIOS Update Bootable CD: g4uj23us.iso g4uj23uc.txt

Screenshot

wget https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles/g4uj23us.iso
geteltorito -o ./bios-t530-2_60.img g4uj23us.iso
sudo mount -t vfat ./bios-t530-2_60.img /mnt -o loop,offset=16384
ls /mnt/FLASH/G4ETA0WW/

gives this

'$01D5100.FL1'  '$01D5100.FL2'   206a7.hsh   306a4.hsh   306a5.hsh   306a6.hsh   306a8.hsh   306a9.hsh

in /mnt/AUTOEXEC.BAT command.com shall be replaced by

dosflash.exe /sd /file G4ETA0WW\$01D5100.FL1

umount the filesystem and write to a usb-stick

sudo umount /mnt
sudo dd if=./bios-t530-2_60.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1M

Now Reboot the laptop in legacy mode from the usb-stick

Once its all done, you can go back into the BIOS and enable UEFI mode again
And we can go on and and follow the instructions on GitHub: 1vyrain and boot into their ISO

According to

GitHub.com: hamishcoleman/thinkpad-ec Enabling use of xx20 keyboard on xx30 thinkpads

it is enough to downgrade to 2.76, I am satisfied to be on 2.60 for now.

Well actually We have two t530 in the family, and when I tried it on the second one it didn’t work right away. It seems that a genuine supported battery has to be installed for the ECP to be programmed.

Downgrade BIOS on thinkpad t530

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