T480 1.52 bricked external battery interface

[KyleSanderson]

Called Lenovo support a couple hours ago, they told me I had to pay $190 for the unit to be diagnosed (probably should have hit my channel guy as opposed to gone retail).

Ended up downgrading the BIOS quite substantially (all the way back to 2021), which did not resolve the issue. Disconnecting the internal battery after getting the EC going again and confirming it was charging, was enough to Battery 2 back into the ACPI table. This consisted of physically holding the external battery after removing the AC connection in the preboot environment. Pinhole resetting and the usual nuances did not fix this. The EC seemed to keep crashing and wouldn't flip (or at times charge) batteries.

Confirming in Linux it was still able to read the battery through dmidecode was helpful, if this still works for you there's hope.
Anyway, there goes 6 hours. Doubt I'm going to BIOS upgrade this thing ever again due to the severe lack of vendor support.

EDIT:

1. Pin hole reset
2. Disconnect the internal battery
3. Connect the external battery
4. AC power on the T480
5. Remove the AC power immediately leaving the external battery connected
6. Boot into your OS, confirm that the device now shows up
7. Safely power down the unit
8. Connect the internal battery
9. AC power on the T480
10. Remove the AC power immediately leaving both the internal and external battery connected
11. Confirm both batteries show up in your OS
12. Safely power down the unit
13. Screw the backplate on

[hughsie]

Did you upgrade the battery using fwupdmgr?

[KyleSanderson]

Did you upgrade the battery using fwupdmgr?

No, this was across 6 batteries (confirmed on a seperate T470 the batteries continue to be old, but fine). Classic misbehavior between the EC and BIOS.

[hughsie]

Did you upgrade the battery using fwupdmgr?

How did you upgrade the battery firmware?

[KyleSanderson]

Did you upgrade the battery using fwupdmgr?

How did you upgrade the battery firmware?

I have never knowingly upgraded my battery firmware. This was a BIOS change, and the EC disconnecting from populating the ACPI tables until a complete power off.

[hughsie]

Maybe a dumb question; did you try updating (or downgrading) the Embedded Controller firmware rather than the BIOS firmware?

[KyleSanderson]

Maybe a dumb question; did you try updating (or downgrading) the Embedded Controller firmware rather than the BIOS firmware?

I did not, EC is bundled together from the retail website and I'm not that tempted to test fate. I did update ME after the debacle started, which was before the BIOS downgrade, both of which did not have an effect.

[hughsie]

I see quite a few T480 EC updates on the LVFS -- is that a different model?

[KyleSanderson]

I see quite a few T480 EC updates on the LVFS -- is that a different model?

20L6S5V600. I'm still on 0.1.22 for the EC.

[hughsie]

@mrhpearson any ideas?

[mrhpearson]

I'm missing some context and a little confused so can I clarify a few things first:

• this was all triggered by doing a BIOS update? What were you updating from/to?
• EC version is the same all along - 1.22. Nothing changed there?
• Your system is all back up and running - but on an older BIOS now? Or is it still not detecting batteries correctly.

Not sure how useful it will be, but can you run this tool: https://github.com/mrhpearson/ecreg-dump. It will dump some extra information that might be useful (I'm not 100% sure...the T480 is quite old and I don't have any experience with it)

And for completeness - what distro are you running, and which version of fwupd are you using?

Mark

[KyleSanderson]

I'm missing some context and a little confused so can I clarify a few things first:

• this was all triggered by doing a BIOS update? What were you updating from/to?
• EC version is the same all along - 1.22. Nothing changed there?
• Your system is all back up and running - but on an older BIOS now? Or is it still not detecting batteries correctly.

Not sure how useful it will be, but can you run this tool: https://github.com/mrhpearson/ecreg-dump. It will dump some extra information that might be useful (I'm not 100% sure...the T480 is quite old and I don't have any experience with it)

And for completeness - what distro are you running, and which version of fwupd are you using?

Mark

I'm back online now, this was all triggered from the BIOS rollup from 1.51 to 1.52 (confirmed from logged total wa capacity, and it dropping from 90k to 18k after application). The EC and BIOS seemed to stop communicating, the charging indication would kick on, but the external LED was flakey as hell. The pinhole reset which was supposed to reset the EC(?) did not work, and only after opening up the unit, and removing the internal battery, making the unit rely on External AC/Battery did the ACPI tables populate with Batt2. dmidecode saw the unit throughout this, but did not detect the removal or swap of the external battery while the system was live.

I was an Ubuntu 24.04.1 kid through this, flipped back to gentoo because I'm traveling now.

[WindMay]

I'm currently having the same issue, @KyleSanderson may I ask which BIOS version made your battery available on ACPI?

[KyleSanderson]

I'm currently having the same issue, @KyleSanderson may I ask which BIOS version made your battery available on ACPI?

What add-on cards do you have in your ThinkPad? Don't be shy with models of you have them

[WindMay]

I'm currently having the same issue, @KyleSanderson may I ask which BIOS version made your battery available on ACPI?

What add-on cards do you have in your ThinkPad? Don't be shy with models of you have them

SN520 x2 M.2 2242 NVMe and an AX210/AX1675 wifi...
Tried a few BIOS versions but no luck on getting the main battery listed on ACPI...

[KyleSanderson]

I'm currently having the same issue, @KyleSanderson may I ask which BIOS version made your battery available on ACPI?

What add-on cards do you have in your ThinkPad? Don't be shy with models of you have them

SN520 x2 M.2 2242 NVMe and an AX210/AX1675 wifi... Tried a few BIOS versions but no luck on getting the main battery listed on ACPI...

It looks like the keying is right on those - if you have a converter board rip it out. The EC basically failed and kept cycling when it couldn't talk properly to the be200 card, when I removed it things started to come back to normal after the same process at the top was followed. I'm staying on the ancient bios, and I'm about to go on another very long trip, so it works here. There's fake keyboards and trackpads also floating around, I don't know if they would have the same impact but something to consider.

Sucks that you're going through this, but have fun with your thinkpad. lots of options on these older models (compared to the millions that I spend for the newer stuff at work).