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Adding a USB port to the ThinkPad X1 Nano (the hard way)
- exabrial 2y agoWhy is ‘no ports’ still a fucking trend?
- AshamedCaptain 2y ago> I use a Logitech mouse which can connect wirelessly to a USB dongle over RF, providing lower latency and better battery life than Bluetooth In my experience this has not been true at all now that most Logitech mice use LE ("Bluetooth Smart") rather than BT. The only advantage the RF dongle has is that it works without an OS.... or on an OS without a BT/LE stack, like here.
- jwells89 2y agoDongles can also be handy for peripherals that are frequently used on different machines, particularly if they don't have built-in multi-pairing and quick host switching. One exception to the "no BT/LE stack" case is the combo of Apple input devices paired with Macs or hackintoshed generic PCs with a handful of Broadcom-based BT chipsets used by Macs. macOS flips some bit on those cards that tells them to keep Apple peripherals paired at all times, which allows you to type and mouse around in the pre-boot environment and subsequently-booted OSes without drivers even on old BIOS-based machines which can't load EFI drivers.
- felixg3 2y agoIt’s an apple exclusive thing, as they seem to be the only implementer of a USB Bluetooth HID bridge which the Broadcom adapter essentially exposes in firmware. There are a few Bluetooth dongles with CSR chips that can be turned into USB HID interfaces with previously paired Bluetooth peripherals.
- AshamedCaptain 2y agoIt just remembers any peripherals you have already paired with the controller, it's nothing specific to "Apple peripherals". And on the next boot it then shows up as a USB HID device in the pre-OS environment, talking Bluetooth behind the scenes to those same peripherals. I have a (10 year old?) DBT-120 from D-Link which did this, and even Windows had some support for it. Never seen anything for BLE; my wild guess is that Apple now simply puts a BT stack on their UEFI. Not too far-fetched. But it doesn't really help the noOS use case, since you still need a BT stack with UI _somewhere_ in order to pair your keyboard for the first time.
- 5ADBEEF 2y agoRF dongles almost always are Nordic Semiconductor parts and they use their proprietary (but open) protocol called Enhanced Shockburst. The minimum latency of BLE is 7.5ms (fastest connection interval in the spec) while ESB can be in the 100s of microseconds. Not sure about power savings but latency is better.
- AshamedCaptain 2y ago> RF dongles almost always are Nordic Semiconductor parts and they use their proprietary (but open) protocol called Enhanced Shockburst. Not really, Logitech actually uses the LE PHY even for their "RF" protocol, at least since the Logitech Bolt controller which is what TFA is talking about. You can sniff Bolt traffic with a LE sniffer. > The minimum latency of BLE is 7.5ms (fastest connection interval in the spec) while ESB can be in the 100s of microseconds This makes for an average 4ms of latency, which matches what Logitech advertises. Then USB is then going to introduce 5-10ms at the very least...
- gzalo 2y agoI don't get the point of designing and building a 3.3 to 5v booster instead of just wiring a cable to one of the existing USB C vbus 5v pins? Am I missing something?
- user_7832 2y agoIf I understand right, the existing USB ports are only USB-C. I'm not sure of what implementation the Nano has but if it supports USB-PD it may be able to output up to 20V if the "main" connected device asks for it.
- gzalo 2y agoFair enough, if it supports being charged using any port that is reasonable. I would assume that the notebook has some other internal 5v regulator, maybe for the embedded controller or some other legacy device
- russdill 2y agoIt's the safe thing to do. If you source power from some other place you have to worry about not accidentally back powering something by mistake. Granted, this can be accomplished just by carefully ruling out the possibility. Some people would rather just not risk making a mistake here
- breakingcups 2y agoI'm not an electronics engineer, but is it safe to shift 3.3v to 5v if the underlying hardware wasn't designed for that? Is there a chance to put too much strain on the power source?
- avhon1 2y agoThe "strain" would depend on how many milliamps your 5V device draws. I don't know the current consumption of these logitech dongles, but it seems to be adequately low for this hack to work.
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- dcminter 2y agoI encountered the same mpcie card whitelist nuisance on the Lenovo m73 Tiny. Turns out there that you can just update the serial and model number to "INVALID" and it will then let you boot with a non-whitelisted device, albeit with an angry beep and warning message. https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/lx7d8f/pfsense_lenovo_m73_tiny_thin_client_add_second/ https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/lx7d8f/pfsense_len... Apparently it's possible to add the pcie device identifier to the whitelist, but it looks like a very fiddly process and I didn't really care about the minor issues resulting from the cruder approach: https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/dcf0lw/comment/fbpy0c5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/dcf0lw/comment/fbpy... No idea if any of that works on the X1 Nano, but you never know.
- lemonlime0x3C33 2y agoThis was a joy to read, your easyEDA design looked great too! I didn't know they had 3D capabilities.
- k4rli 2y agoThis blog has a nice screensaver, especially for OLED.
- mushufasa 2y agosounds like the author enjoyed the process. of course, if you need more ports the thinkpad x13 is basically the same size/weight of the nano with many more ports
- sampa 2y agono, it's not
- metadat 2y agoIt looks like the X13 is 1/2 lb heavier, as per https://jcs.org/2021/01/27/x1nano https://jcs.org/2021/01/27/x1nano and https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx/thinkpad-x13-(intel)-/22tpx13x3n1 https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx/th...
- adolph 2y agoGuys would rather design and PCBway an internal mod than for OpenBSD support Bluetooth. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25950845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25950845
- Reason077 2y ago> "connect wirelessly to a USB dongle over RF, providing lower latency and better battery life than Bluetooth." Is this still true of modern Bluetooth 5.0 LE devices? Not sure about latency, but battery life seems to be extremely good now days. I get at least half a year out of a charge, on a mouse I use nearly every day.
- wkat4242 2y agoI wonder how much those Flex pcbs cost. They can be costly even with cheap prototypers. It's a really clean job though.
- userbinator 2y agothough it's a bit tiresome to use because it requires a steady hand applying downward pressure for about eight minutes for a full read and write. A suitably heavy weight will solve that problem.
- prmoustache 2y agoI am a simple guy, I would have just attached a usb-hub with velcro on my laptop.
- timonoko 2y agoAlso now that we are modifying hardware and 3d-printing, one could make USB-4 hub which is practically invisible. And because we want to use some particular RF-mouse, we can also strip that dongle and insert it inside this selfmade hub, making it even smaller.
- prmoustache 2y agoThere was a video by Jon Bringus integrating a usb hub on his prison's laptop: https://youtu.be/5KjDIlxc59s https://youtu.be/5KjDIlxc59s
- ein0p 2y agoSpeaking of, what’s the closest thing to the old 11” MacBook Air that’s currently available and runs Linux?
- Yakub-AlEspunj 2y agoI'm surprised Lenovo's whitelist hasn't been tackled more frequently, given its well-documented limitations. The only real reason to maintain such an artificial barrier is to artificially inflate profits from FRUs and enterprise support. The fact that every other major manufacturer has moved past this practice already only serves as evidence. I mean, come on, Lenovo, you're trying to compete with the likes of HP and Dell, and you're stuck on this archaic thinking. It's almost as if you're deliberately trying to alienate your most loyal customers.
- ryzvonusef 2y agoDIY Perks had a similar problem (USB-A mouse dongle; laptop with only USB-C) he decided to fiddle with the dongle and change it's port instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-vFtiDYiIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-vFtiDYiIw
- freedomben 2y agoAmazing adventure and great write up! It reads like an adventure novel :-) > Unfortunately, Lenovo continues to implement a stupid network card whitelist that IBM started over 20 years ago on its ThinkPad models. If the card in the M.2 slot is not advertising a known PCI vendor and product ID in the whitelist contained in the BIOS (now UEFI firmware), the ThinkPad will refuse to boot. Why?? Are there legitimate reasons for this sort of design behavior other than anticompetitiveness?
- Spooky23 2y agoSupply chain integrity comes to mind.
- adolph 2y agoThe tao of hardware supply chains. Surely they can do the checksums tho. https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/29/5253226/nsa-cia-fbi-laptop-usb-plant-spy https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/29/5253226/nsa-cia-fbi-lapt...
- Spooky23 2y agoThat’s one scenario. Around COVID times, my then employer got stuck with about 40,000 devices, 30% of which had undetectable, counterfeit memory that would eventually cause a complete failure. Replacement was a $80M lesson for that vendor.
- MonaroVXR 2y agoHow did you for out? And what kind of steps are you taking right now?
- jamesy0ung 2y agoYeah it's such a horrible idea. It sucks the ending was just hijacking the usb bus used by the fingerprint sensor :(
- utensil4778 2y ago
- utensil4778 2y agoI had to do a similar thing with my T530. I wanted to upgrade to a WiFi 6+Bluetooth card. The built in Bluetooth adapter is very old, I think v4.2. It's also a finicky module with a mezzanine connector, and it's nestled deeply into the internal magnesium frame so the range is abysmal. I reflashed the BIOS to kill the whitelist, but I'm left with a bigger problem. The WiFi slot offers PCI, but not USB. The WWAN slot has USB, but not PCI. I ended up tapping into the original Bluetooth connector to steal the USB lines and route them back to the PCI connector. I had some issues at first with the device not enumerating reliably, but it eventually settled down. Now I have WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5. Unfortunately the WiFi frontend is extremely bad (it's a Chinese knockoff) and I have pretty bad signal strength even literally on top of the router. But it works well enough and my Bluetooth headphones now work more than 10ft away from the machine. The major problem is that the only WiFi 6 card available in mini PCIe is knockoff Intel AX210 cards. I suppose that's fair, mPCIe is basically obsolete these days. Unfortunately I don't have space for a M.2 or other adapter. Maybe I could build a custom express card
- ssl-3 2y agoAny advice on selecting a "good" AX210 card -- or perhaps avoiding a bad one? I understand that it may be a bit of a crapshoot, but I'd like to improve my odds of success if possible for my own T530. (Alternatively, the AX200 cards from the usual sources have a lot less of a back-alley Shenzhen feeling than the AX210 cards I've looked at. Perhaps that's a safer option.)
- Rinzler89 2y ago>I reflashed the BIOS to kill the whitelist Still boggles my mind that people praise ThinkPads as an option for those looking for repairability and upgradability while casually talking about the built-in BIOS whitelist designed to block all that. To me that means an instant black ball. It's cool hackers are patching this out, but this anti-consumer feature should not be present in the first place in something people recommend.
- davisr 2y agoI run Libreboot on my ThinkPad and it works great.