A few weeks ago, I left my #ThinkPad X280 in standby mode w/o a connected charger over a long weekend, resulting in a complete discharge. Next to ffs being unhappy about this, the charging unit took a hit. Now, even with a connected charger, it slowly discharged - under load, I had top 1.5h. When booting up, a scary message appeared.

After searching the web for a while, I found this exact issue and reports and even a repair guide for a similar model.

https://old.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/1gyv56s/guide_how_to_flash_a_t480s_thunderbolt_firmware/

Compared to the T480, the location of the chip was a bit different and flashrom detected two different Winbond flash chips, "W25Q80BV/W25Q80DV" and "W25Q80RV". After failing miserably to read the chip's inscription - all in all, the chip is smaller than my small finger's finger nail -, I just tested both, where only "W25Q80RV" reported a status.

# flashrom -p ch341a_spi -c "W25Q80RV"
Everything else worked as documented over at the Reddit thread. I just realized that SPI is a tricky beast and sometimes just requires a second try. Oh, and the connector needs to be in the exact right position. So, it worked! My ThinkPad is not reduced to some work-life-balance-enhancing auto-turn off machine, and my sweating is only half due to the approaching heat wave.