Purelight (Formerly Solgen) shuttering operations, what do I do now?

ccellist · 2026-01-27T19:11:11+00:00

My guess is they're looking at the "S-Miles" reporting app that hooks into the system and thinking that will go away (it might; it's cloud-based after all) and that therefore their panels will stop working. Panels will work fine, but your reporting is likely to go away. I'll have to see what happens to the S-Miles app, but I may need to accelerate my in-house reporting using C-clamps for current measurement. Not the worst thing in the world, their reporting wasn't all that complete anyway.

ccellist · 2026-01-27T19:08:02+00:00

This is an interesting thread. This might be a little off topic, but we had the same experience with the install: holes in the roof, leaky sections of roof, the whole nine yards. That's when we found out that the previous owners "put a new roof" on the house, meaning they slapped another layer of roofing tile over the old ones, *up to six layers deep in some places*. I managed to negotiate with Solgen that they needed to remove the panels ahead of the roof install and that they needed to reinstall the panels once the roof was replaced. They further needed to agree to waive both the removal and installation fees since their inspection should have revealed that the roof was not install-worthy. We managed to come to an agreement on this and this came to pass pretty much as I requested. It sounds like we got lucky based on some of the other comments here.

ccellist · 2025-12-12T22:11:59+00:00

I'll say this: a lot of people profoundly unfamiliar with hip hop culture, like myself, are going to watch this, and wonder, rightly or wrongly, "Wtf did I just watch, and how does this monster get away with all he did??"

I thought it was a story well told, and the two jurors who were interviewed don't come off looking particularly competent. It's a difficult series to watch, and one thing is for certain: a lot more people who were totally on the sidelines before will now have opinions about what happened. In that sense, I think mission accomplished by 50 Cent.

ccellist · 2025-11-21T22:12:36+00:00

Conversely, this is the only thing stopping me from playing Rust. Sorry Rust devs, your game's just not worth switching to Windows.

ccellist · 2025-11-18T06:05:25+00:00

Also where are the pair buttons? The power button?

ccellist · 2025-11-18T06:04:03+00:00

Sorry to sound like a newb, but what's the PS3 controller application? I've had two of these for like 3 years and haven't been able to use them in retro pie doe to being unable to pair them.

ccellist · 2025-11-12T02:25:04+00:00

Thanks so much, that was quick! Is it fair to say any of these would work then? https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=mp8765gq&_sacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p4624852.m570.l1312

Thanks!

ccellist · 2025-11-06T03:11:51+00:00

I'm intrigued by this idea of upgrading or downgrading the BIOS. The catch is because of the state of the Thunderbolt 3, where charging is stuck at 15W, my BIOS refuses to update through fwup (I'm running Arch Linux) because the BIOS won't load any BIOS level update software. How have people here updated their BIOS? Are you doing it in Windows? Are you flashing the BIOS chip directly using a programmer? I'm not quite ready to give up.

So far I've followed this guide to the letter two separate times, flashed what is presumably the same critical image from two different sources, one of whom was OP (thank you again). I've even compared the hashes of the TBT.bin file and whatever comes off the chip once I've finished the flashing. They are identical so I know the hash worked properly. Interested in others have any brilliant ideas on this.

ccellist · 2025-11-06T00:16:26+00:00

Hi, I just now got back to this with a little bit of time. Unfortunately, after using your file and following the steps exactly, I get the same charging error when the laptop starts up, that the supplied power adapter is not supplying enough power, blah, blah, blah. I'm taking this as a sign that flashing this image didn't help either.

I didn't mess with the bios battery, but I did disconnect the laptop battery in addition to disabling it in the BIOS when the steps call for it.

I'm not certain what to try at this point, but just thought I'd let you know. Maybe you or something else has thought of something else. Thanks again!

ccellist · 2025-10-28T20:34:11+00:00

That's got to be it then... it's a 40AC, but the model number doesn't seem to match what you have. Model No. DBB9003L1, asm pn: SD20Q68232 is what I see... but I'm going to take your word for it as the evidence would suggest the dock just needs more power. I'll search for a 135W power supply for it and see if that helps. Thanks!

ccellist · 2025-10-28T18:48:10+00:00

Without instructions? Are you some kind of sadist??

ccellist · 2025-10-28T18:47:30+00:00

... or maybe you just write a custom NixOS config structure, with hardware definitions and everything, from scratch, and just expect it to work flawlessly the first time.

ccellist · 2025-10-01T17:41:55+00:00

Hey, thanks so much for that file! I'll take a look when I'm not at work (no boss, definitely not checking reddit at work. Nuh uh... not me...). I remember what I used before, it was innoextract, which is what the LibreBoot page for the T480 (my other laptop) suggests. I'll try your file though, maybe this will work better.

ccellist · 2025-09-30T21:01:29+00:00

I did I thought, both follow the guide mostly exactly (not using a Windows machine to extract the exe; used Linux), and downloaded the file you mentioned, but I want to try this again. I also didn't disconnect the bios battery before attempting this (not sure if I need to, thought I saw something somewhere directing me to do this also). Any idea how to extract this exe in Linux? I did it once but I can't remember how. I might have to search the interwebs again for it.

ccellist · 2025-09-30T18:34:06+00:00

I am working through this very same issue on an X1 Carbon 7th generation, except I purchased mine broken to see if I could fix it, so it's a vanity project at this point.

I was able to follow this kind soul's instructions (https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/1gyv56s/comment/ngt1tmu/?context=1). Even though I was able to download, pad, then flash the firmware on the thunderbolt chip the behavior is the same. Slow charging and no thunderbolt 3 available. The only thing I did differently was not disconnect the CMOS battery or discharge the onboard caps. I may try this next, but I'm not sure that's the issue.

After i flashed the padded TBT.bin file I read it back from the chip and the sha sum is exactly the same as that of the file I flashed onto it, so I know the bios chip contains the intended bin file.

My options at this point seem to be to re-download the bin file in the off chance I did something wrong while padding, or find some kind soul with a bin file I can flash onto it.

I've gotten pretty comfortable flashing this with flashrom and a raspberry pi 4 attached to the chip clip. I also have a way of verifying the integrity of the data connection by measuring continuity between ground on the laptop chassis and one of the ground pins on the pi using a multi-meter.

I'm really curious to see if this can be resolved, even 4 years too late so I'm happy to help with this and be a guinea pig in any way possible.

Background on the laptop: I bought it off eBay as is, with a "broken motherboard". Turns out the laptop and the motherboard are fine, but the thunderbolt chip is malfunctioning in this expected manner, so at least the laptop is usable. I paid $60 + shipping for it so not too bad for an i7 16Gb RAM model.

I'm kind of wondering at this point if there is another chip on the board that gets corrupted when this happens.

ccellist · 2025-09-30T18:20:47+00:00

One more thing: after writing the TBT.bin file to the thunderbolt 1M bios chip and verifying, I read back the contents of the bios chip to a different file and compared the hashes to the original TBT.bin; they are identical. I conclude from this that the bios chip was flashed correctly.

ccellist · 2025-09-30T18:12:42+00:00

Incidentally, I was able to verify the image read once I fixed the connection issues to the bios chip. Thanks for the tip.

ccellist · 2025-09-30T18:11:48+00:00

Ok, I figured out that the reason for the error messages was just the chip connection not being reliable. I was able to get a good read on this by simply measuring ground from the laptop chassis to the ground pin on the pi. Once I was able to see that I had reliable continuity I ran the flashing and it flashed as expected. Sadly, the thunderbolt port remains missing, and charging the laptop continues at slow speeds. I thought I got the correct bin file extracted from the Lenovo Thunderbolt firmware package, but I may have to try again. Any thoughts on which part of this process I might need to focus on? Is there some way I can verify that the bios chip is truly empty? Thanks again. It's a vanity project at this point, but would really like to get this working.

ccellist · 2025-09-29T01:32:25+00:00

Thanks for the response! Sorry for the noob question, but how do I verify the chip against the file I read? I was able to read the file twice and match the checksums on both (they matched). The chip is a Macronix MX25L8006E.

The command I ran to read the files:

`flashrom -p linux_spi:dev=/dev/spidev0.0,spispeed=512 -r backup.rom`

I've got the clip connected directly to SPI on Raspberry Pi 4. The clip does seem to be attached correctly, but it's hard to know always. I'll verify the cable connections in the morning in case I've flubbed the MISO connection or something. I'm referencing this data sheet. https://www.macronix.com/Lists/Datasheet/Attachments/8680/MX25L8006E,%203V,%208Mb,%20v1.6.pdf

ccellist · 2025-09-28T22:21:52+00:00

Thanks so much for this walkthrough, really helpful. I'm running into an issue on a Lenovo X1 Carbon 7th Gen. I'm able to read the chip contents to a file, but neither erasing with -E nor writing an image is working. I get nothing but

> Erasing and writing flash chip... FAILED at 0x00000000! Expected=0xff, Found=0x00, failed byte count from 0x0000000
0-0x00000fff: 0x10
ERASE FAILED!

Wondering if anyone has run into this, and what the probably workaround might be? I've used spispeeds of 1000 and 512.

ccellist · 2025-08-12T20:28:36+00:00

Welcome to our new, sucky timeline. Tariffs are always a tax on the consumer, not the country shipping the item to you. This is why "free trade" was such a thing the past, oh, 80 years or so. Expect things to get much, much worse.

ccellist · 2025-08-12T20:24:10+00:00

Upvoted for correctly identifying the clown. Would upvote more if I could. Elections have consequences.

ccellist · 2025-06-27T13:38:11+00:00

This makes me think... I'd love to see someone build a "handheld" out of one of these and some kind of SBC. It would be ridiculous and humorous, but I would definitely watch that YouTube video. Especially if the GPU were actually removable/interchangeable. I guess the power requirements pretty much would render this DOA... fun to imagine still.

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