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Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

quantum5.ca

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Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#171

Post by bsimpson »

darthcloud wrote: post #87

I had the same thing happen to me with my Thinkpad Nano, and researching how to fix this made me realize pc manufacturer really don't care. PC bricked from BIOS update are still ultra common. I uploaded a dump of the flash [1] in the bad state and they somehow analyzed it and made a fix. Great for others I guess, but I'm still mindblown that the regular path would have been that this perfectly working laptop to this…

Lenovo also just had it happen with their Legion Go. They finally pulled the BIOS from distribution, but doesn't sound like they're doing anything to help the victims whose devices got bricked by a bad update.

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#172

Post by doublepg23 »

vaylian wrote: post #130
doublepg23 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SeaBIOS on a Coreboot laptop is pretty minimal. Paltry CPU speeds on anything that supports it nowadays, but fun for a beater system.

Coreboot looks promising. Do you know why the CPU speeds are so bad? And do they get better once the main operating system starts up?

Not a hardware engineer so feel free to fact-check all of this.

My understanding is Coreboot is a minimum-viable firmware implementation to get your hardware initialized ... and not much else.

Once Coreboot is ready you then use "Payloads".

Payloads can be as varied as booting into Linux directly, GRUB directly, or a whole UEFI/BIOS implementation.

SeaBIOS is a whole FOSS BIOS implementation (commonly used for emulators like QEMU) and is somewhat tractable according to my prior research (~50k lines of C).

My comment about CPU support is due to modern systems using UEFI - the payload for that is TianoCore EDK2. It's quite large (900k+ lines) and while it has much more eyes on it, if minimalism is what you're looking for I doubt it would qualify.

That leaves you with systems from before ~2013 or so - assuming you can even flash Coreboot to them, which only supports a handful of systems.

I suppose you could just jump into Linux though. Perhaps it's silly to do anything else.

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#173

Post by yellowapple »

quantum5 wrote: post #151
yellowapple wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any other laptop is going to have the same risk of a failed BIOS flash, and will likely require the same degree of manual intervention to fix. That the replacement process entails swapping (and potentially upgrading, as I did in this exact situation with my FW16) just the motherboard instead of the entire laptop is a strict improvement. That said, I agree with the article that a company like Framework with an ostensi…

> Any other laptop is going to have the same risk of a failed BIOS flash, and will likely require the same degree of manual intervention to fix. What I found from my research while writing the post is that both Dell and HP have BIOS recovery options without having to open the laptop at all, so that's not quite true. I think there's more Framework could have done here to make this a much less painful experience.

From what I can tell, HP's non-invasive BIOS recovery options are very model-dependent, and even models which do allegedly support recovery reportedly refuse to boot into recovery mode for some folks.

But yes, Dell is the outlier that has me saying “likely” instead of “definitely” above; they've had orders of magnitude more time and money than Framework has to throw at BIOS development, and it shows. I agree with you that Framework should be making a priority of getting their BIOSes to that level; I'm also willing to extend them some grace given the company's age and resources.

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#174

Post by craftkiller »

artisinal wrote: post #127
craftkiller wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in that situation, you know the damage _wont_ be to the USB ports on the motherboard. The motherboard is screwed to the case, and the expansion cards are locked to the case, so they won't move relative to each other. You expansion card might get damaged by the initial tripping over the cord, and some other parts might get damaged from the fall, but you can trivially buy first-party replacement parts for anything…

If you drop a framework on its side the impact on the dongles will push them onto the board. Plastic flexes. There isn’t any shock absorbing happening. I don’t see any strain relieve on those dongles. Perhaps framework can learn from Apple here.

Strain relief would be nice, but framework has been shipping laptops for 5 years. Has this hypothetical happened to anyone? It sounds unlikely to me.

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#175

Post by bsimpson »

gonzalohm wrote: post #2

A bit off-topic, but kind of relevant. I firmly believe that if installing custom firmware voids the warranty of a device, installing official updates should extend the warranty. I'm tired of sloppy updates or change of behavior that mess with how I use MY device. At this point, I'm convinced Google is doing this on purpose. My Google TV has become slow since the Gemini update, which I wasn't asked if I wanted it. My…

> installing official updates should extend the warranty.

That sounds like a big incentive to never ship updates.

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#176

Post by poizan42 »

hojjat12000 wrote: post #108

It's interesting to read this. Because I recently had something similar happened to me and I had mixed feelings like the author here. I have the original Framework 13, but I have almost changed everything inside of it (motherboard AMD 7840U, wifi 7, ram 96GB, ssd, better hinge, the CNC shell, hdmi dongle v3, APU Fan, speakers v2, webcam v2). I still was using the original battery and it was at 60% health. So, I decid…

It's crazy, the last time any PRs got merged was back in January 2024 [0]. Seems it has just become a black hole completely ignored by anyone at framework.

[0] https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController/pull...

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#177

Post by alnwlsn »

cschep wrote: post #124

The lack of support from Framework is so damning. Nirav has been a fun CEO to watch, but this feels like a huge, huge miss. Can anyone defend this? Why would anyone purchase anything from this company ever again?

To be fair, I've bought things for more that promised zero support, but at least you know what you're getting into with that. Bad support is just plain bad.

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#178

Post by bsimpson »

cschep wrote: post #124

The lack of support from Framework is so damning. Nirav has been a fun CEO to watch, but this feels like a huge, huge miss. Can anyone defend this? Why would anyone purchase anything from this company ever again?

I opened this thread to see if he was active in it. Disappointed that I haven't seen him in here.

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#179

Post by doublepg23 »

scrlk wrote: post #114
doublepg23 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody really seems to talk about how repairable enterprise laptops are Thinkpads have been a meme since the early 2010s. It's funny to bring up the T480/s as positive example because I remember people complaining about anything past ~xx20 series. > caught everyone's attention with the fun DIY repair angle Framework is a reaction to the cult following a lot of the business laptops had. When people are spending $$ t…

It was Lenovo ditching the classic ThinkPad 7 row keyboard with the Ivy Bridge models c. 2012 that really pissed people off

Indeed, multiple civil wars have been fought since the Lenovo acquisition.

Re: Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

#180

Post by vel0city »

throwuxiytayq wrote: post #154
anthonj wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your point, but what i'm talking about is the company generating a strong incentive to people to buy upgrades or replacements. This whole submission is about a user going extra length to recover a perfectly functioning main board (with price between 400 and 800 eur depending on model) after an official update went wrong and was suggested to buy a new one. Mind that I am planning to buy one as well, so I don't h…

> a perfectly functioning main board If I understand correctly, the problem was that the board was the exact opposite of that. The post title uses the phrase “bricked”. I agree that FWs handling was pretty bad, but then again, what exactly is the proposed ideal-but-realistic solution they should have offered here?

Tons of motherboards for other computers have dual BIOS update processes so it can roll back to the old version if the upgrade is unsuccessful.

They could have also had the BIOS chip be socketable and sold it individually pre-programmed.

I agree not everyone does this, but its not like some incredibly out there idea.

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