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Framework Raises $18M Series A

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Re: Framework Raises $18M Series A

#131

Post by VTimofeenko »

gnyman wrote: post #115
popol12 wrote: post #16

It would be amazing if they could also sell repairable household electrical goods like washing machine, dishwasher, etc - in the future. These are plagued by planed obsolescence. I would totally pay for repairable ones even with a premium. Imagine a dishwasher that you can hack and program yourself :D

There are a few companies who are focusing on sustainability/repairabilty, you just have to look (sometimes very hard) and then take the risk that the company won't be in business in 5 years. One example I came across recently after hearing how hard Dyson vacuums are to repair is Lupe https://lupetechnology.com/ "Someone" should make a list of these companies, or maybe there is already some site or place which focuse…

There is a community on Reddit called "BuyItForLife"[1] with such focus.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/

Re: Framework Raises $18M Series A

#132

Post by bcrosby95 »

Sebb767 wrote: post #117
bcrosby95 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love for them to expand their laptop offerings to include something a bit more powerful. It seems like a much easier expansion rather than moving into routers.

I assume they're going to expand their laptop offering either way, but adding a larger model is probably not want they mean with more ambitious :)

I figured adding in a swappable GPU would be fairly ambitious, which is something I'd expect in a model like this.

As opposed to just taking what they have and putting it in a larger form factor, which, yeah, doesn't seem terribly ambitious.

Re: Framework Raises $18M Series A

#133

Post by BaseballPhysics »

krasin wrote: post #103
rozab wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elevated Systems did a comprehensive setup guide a couple days ago. There are a some extra steps to go through, but it seems to work well with Ubuntu 21.10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jibqw5C3gk8&t=15m45s - timestamp to where he discusses fixing sleep issues

Thank you for link to the video. I watched the relevant part, where it's suggested to set pcie_aspm_on_bat=powersupersave. According to the Framework forums, this is not helping and people see 7-8W power consumption while in this "powersupersave" mode ([1]). It sounds like the setting is there, but it does not work. Framework needs to fix that. 1. https://community.frame.work/t/issues-with-power-usage/12261

If you read the rest of that thread, you'll find the issue was resolved and it was not an issue with the laptop:

https://community.frame.work/t/issues-with-power-usage/12261...

> Issue was that I was running linux-zen, strangely. With linux-zen, the CPU wouldn’t get past C3 and idle power usage was 7-13W. With regular linux, the CPU reaches C8 and idle power usage is ~5W. Strange that linux-zen did that, but ok ig

The other main culprit is whether or not you can successfully enable PSR for the display. IIRC, the laptop cannot hit C8 or C10 sleep states without PSR enabled, even if you have the ASPM power saving mode enabled.

Speaking for myself, running Debian unstable, after lowering the display brightness, with the right settings my laptop easily hits 2.5-3W idle.

Re: Framework Raises $18M Series A

#134

Post by BaseballPhysics »

krasin wrote: post #108
rcthompson wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's 2 supported sleep modes, referred to as "s2idle" and "deep" in /sys/power/mem_sleep. My limited understanding is this: - "s2idle" = S0ix and "deep" = S3 - S0ix is similar to how smartphones go to sleep by just idling everything and not actually sleeping. On the Framework it drains around 1 or 2% per hour (I haven't measured exactly.) - S3 sleep is the more familiar suspend-to-RAM functionality. The power drai…

Thank you for adding these details. My current Linux laptop (released in 2015) can sleep for about week, resume in 3-4 seconds. Am I reading your comment correctly that buying a Framework would degrade my user experience?

Yes. This is why I switched to simply hibernating, which has worked flawlessly for me. The shutdown and startup times are obviously a bit longer (it takes 10 seconds to get to the bootloader, after which its about 12 seconds to wake up), but since it's truly off, it can remain asleep indefinitely.

Re: Framework Raises $18M Series A

#135

Post by fsflover »

abrowne wrote: post #126

> this funding unlocks categories even more ambitious than our first one. Any guesses? I'd love to buy a Framework phone — if they can guarantee Android updates.

Consider Linux phones instead (Librem 5 or Pinephone). Those are repairable and with lifetime software updates unlike any Android or Graphene OS.

Re: Framework Raises $18M Series A

#136

Post by Jaepa »

abrowne wrote: post #126

> this funding unlocks categories even more ambitious than our first one. Any guesses? I'd love to buy a Framework phone — if they can guarantee Android updates.

Modular phones are especially hard. There is both an power optimization & physical size constraints. Neither of which square with modular replacements.

Re: Framework Raises $18M Series A

#137

Post by aljarry »

duped wrote: post #107
deltron3030 wrote: post #6

Is there a miniature ASIO soundcard planned for one of the slots? Not needing to carry an external audio interface around when working within a DAW is a major factor that's keeping me on MacOS (both pro audio and consumer use the same driver there).

You don't need "professional" drivers for your sound card in 2022, latency and stability are mostly a solved problem. There are a few "nice to haves" about ASIO on Windows but it's almost entirely useless, and it's not like Steinberg is maintaining ASIO anymore.

I'm sceptic - I can't run anything with reasonable latency without using ASIO4ALL on my built-in Realtek sound card. Mainboard is with B450 chipset, from around 2017.

Re: Framework Raises $18M Series A

#138

Post by BaseballPhysics »

fyzix wrote: post #31

I wished they took it one step at a time rather than tackling so many issues at once. Making a repairable laptop would be enough to jumpstart the mission. Making it repairable, upgradable, customizable and using morally sourced raw materials seems like too much for a start-up to handle. If they focused on 1 or 2 goals at a time, I reckon they'd be able to manufacture these faster and cheaper.

> If they focused on 1 or 2 goals at a time, I reckon they'd be able to manufacture these faster and cheaper.

... they went from concept to manufacture of a completely new and novel laptop design in a year. The result, in that year, is a laptop that has a premium feel but is as cheap or cheaper than other competitors in the space, while also hitting all the marks on their mission of repairability and consumer focus.

This is, as far as I can tell, a complete, out-of-the-park success. I can't imagine how they could've executed any more flawlessly.

Re: Framework Raises $18M Series A

#139

Post by torginus »

IshKebab wrote: post #81
torginus wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think these are not repairable? More often than not, these things use PCBs that have been manufactured for decades, with multiple manufacturers often using the same designs. I've just repaired the power supply of my fridge, but if I wanted to, I could've bought a compressor for it, either new or refurb. Imo the main issue, is that these things are so cheap that replacement is cheaper than repair labor + co…

There are lots of reasons they aren't repairable. Lack of documentation and debug access is probably the biggest one. My washing machine died, and it looked like some components on the PCB blew. I bought a replacement for around £50 (already a crazy move) but sadly it didn't work. Not really anywhere you can go from there unless you're a professional washing machine repair man. My fridge also had some kind of fault w…

I'm not an expert on washing machine-ology, so sorry if I sound like a smartass, but a quick google search confirmed my suspicions - lower end washing machines tend to use the same PCBs, a telltale sign being that the controls/displays tend to be in the same place.

To be honest, even if you can't find a PCB replacement, a faulty PCB can be fixed by inspecting the components and/or replacing them. Usually it costs only a couple of dollars and an hour of soldering time, less if you are good at it.

Microcontrollers obviously are not as easy, but as luck would have it, my old (early 2000s) machine doesn't even have one - it is driven by those rotary encoder dial thingies that move in a circle and open/close various traces to begin/end program steps.

Re: Framework Raises $18M Series A

#140

Post by greenie_beans »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #80

I really wish there was a vendor that makes a high-performance ARM-based SOC available to third-parties. The problem with x86 laptops these days is that they feel a generation behind Apple laptops in both power consumption and performance. This doesn't have to be the case. Apple has a great hardware team, but they don't have a monopoly on ARM. There could be competitors out there doing what AMD and Intel won't do.

i'm conflicted over wanting a framework and wanting a mac with the m1 chip. if this were to happen one day, does anybody know if a framework with intel would be able to use a chip like this? (i hardly know anything about hardware so pls school me)
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