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I understand that some Lenovo laptops have a white list for approved PCI-Express cards, is there a way to circumvent this on the x230 with a BIOS that doesn't implement the whitelist? There is a forum to request the modification but it's now like 334 pages long.

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It's possible, but it requires a bit of hardware hacking and is fairly difficult. You can find the instructions here. You have to have an eeprom programmer, and reasonable solder skills.

That said, you can find a petition to Lenovo to stop imposing whitelists to achieve vendor lockin. Please join in combating this restrictive practice.

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Yes there are a few ways to achieve this.

there's a software way, exploiting vulnerabilities in X230 BIOS up to v2.60: https://github.com/n4ru/1vyrain

you can downgrade your BIOS to this insecure version if needed: https://github.com/n4ru/IVprep

alternatively refer to this guide: https://github.com/gch1p/thinkpad-bios-software-flashing-guide

There is also a hardware way which replace the stock BIOS by coreboot + seabios and removes the whitelist at the same time. The easiest way to achieve this seems to be skulls: https://github.com/merge/skulls/blob/master/x230/README.md

please note that the BIOS version has to be earlier than v2.77 for this method to work.

If you want to devise your own patch, then reading this 3 part series about unlocking a x230 BIOS will help: https://zmatt.net/unlocking-my-lenovo-laptop-part-1/

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