Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

The fact that the RAM isn't soldered is such a huge benefit here as well. The most recent 7040 series board that sold on eBay with no RAM or SSD included only cost $269. Even if the author decided to just buy that board, that kind of repair cost is unheard of. That's battery service cost territory if you own a MacBook Pro.

Or you can just use the opportunity to upgrade, which a repair from a competitor is not offering.

I disagree with a lot of the assessments the author made:

> First, it is clear that Framework’s BIOS updater is broken, at least on the AMD 7040 series.

This is only true anecdotally. I have installed this exact same BIOS version just fine on my 7040 series unit. It's not broken, works on my machine, my anecdote is worth exactly the same as theirs.

> Secondly, Framework encourages users to perform BIOS updates in their newsletters, and yet if the update results in bricking

Again, anecdotally.

> Thirdly, Framework claims to have made a repairable laptop, and I think my experience and the hoops I had to jump through to flash the BIOS have decidedly shown this not to be the case.

I would definitely welcome a built-in recovery flashing mechanism and more general repairable design within the mainboard. Any improvement is welcome. That said, Framework is already well above industry standard in regard to repairability. There are not many laptops out there with non-soldered RAM and removable WiFi modules.

The trouble here is that they invite this criticism upon themselves by offering repairability as a flagship benefit, but the reality is that it's not very practical for 100% of the computer to avoid every possible pitfall with long-term ownership. Yeah, after 3 years of ownership, X% of laptops get bricked for some kind of reason. This is why extended warranties cost hundreds of dollars regardless of brand. Consumer electronics are just not risk-free purchase transactions.

You also see how the sausage is made because you are doing the repair yourself. If you brick your MacBook Pro and take it to an Apple repair center, they might just be throwing your board in the trash and replacing it, charging you $500, and you get your computer back "repaired." Framework doesn't have a repair center since all repairs that they would perform in a repair center are repairs that you can perform at home, so you get to see how repairs actually work in practice. No computer OEMs and essentially no authorized repair centers hire component-level repair technicians, it's just not a business they want to be in.

I'm sure if you took your Framework to an electronics market in China you could get your BIOS flashed by dozens of vendors for $20 while you wait.

> This is only true anecdotally. I have installed this BIOS version just fine on my 7040 series unit. It's not broken, works on my machine, my anecdote is worth exactly the same as theirs.

I linked an entire thread where people have had similar bricking issues with this exact update: https://community.frame.work/t/bios-update-stuck/83416

If it's just me, I would chalk it up to a freak accident, but it's not.

And in the repair thread, you see it's been happening on and off since last year: https://community.frame.work/t/success-in-recovering-from-ba...

This isn't an anecdote at this point, but a pattern. I don't think the BIOS updater is working as intended if every update is like playing Russian roulette.

> That said, Framework is already well above industry standard in this regard. There are not many laptops out there with non-soldered RAM and removable WiFi modules.

Yes, but they are below industry standard for BIOS flashing issues.

> The trouble here is that they invite this criticism upon themselves by offering repairability as a flagship benefit, but the reality is that it's not very practical for 100% of the computer to avoid every possible pitfall with long-term ownership.

The part that upsets me isn't that they aren't warrantying this. The problem is that they promised to make a laptop I can fix myself and provide all the documentation to do it with confidence long after the warranty ends. That's why I bought into the ecosystem in the first place.

Turns out, they claimed to do better and then does all the anti-repair design anyway for BIOS flashing. They didn't even provide any documentation for fixing it myself, which I would have done gladly and then praised them for having documentation.

Are they below industry standard for BIOS flashing issues? How do you know? Do you have some data to point to? Do vendors like Lenovo or Apple make that information public?

I'm not trying to shill or defend them or anyone else in this industry, and I think they should have a BIOS recovery method built-in like my desktop does.

However, it's important to understand how statistical analysis works for issues like these. As of 2024, reports indicate that Framework has sold a six-figure quantity of laptops. So we have here about 116 posts on the subject of BIOS update failures, 0.1% of sales volume or less.

I realize this napkin math is flawed in itself since we should be isolating to the AMD 7040 series, and we should not assume that every person who has a BIOS flashing issue is posting on the forum, but I think it gives you a very rough idea on why we can't say one way or another whether these issues are common.

If there was a forum post with thousands of anecdotes about this issue, or even better, a class-action lawsuit (law firms will only do this if there's a large enough class to make it worth it), I'd be more inclined to be on your side.

Notably, the flash process itself does not check for the positions of the jumpers and exit, or anything like that, it just proceeds merrily along, and renders the board unbootable. I've been around with Flashrom a dozen times and can't figure out the right sequence of flash-this-rerun-that to recover the thing. (It's an X9DR3, if anyone here has hints.)

So I wish I could be mad at Framework, but only the tiniest bit. It's sadly common.