Hm. I guess a low BIOS battery would make sense. Maybe fallout from all the power drain issues from BIOS 3.09 and before?
Confirmed. The ML1220 RTC battery is 1.8v. Framework really needs to address this head on and stop making people guess
1 Like
You have made @anon81945988 very happy 
One last thing, how long have you had the laptop? Trying to guess if there is a correlation of time/usage with RTC battery life.
As per Nirav’s post above (11th Gen Laptop with weird wake up issues - Buyers beware - #31 by nrp) if you can prove the battery is duff they will replace it and if that doesn’t fix it, they will swap motherboard. Now for us to ‘prove’ it’s duff. You are closer than I am. I’ve steadfastly refused to open the laptop so far 
(kidding, I’ll get to it when the replacement RTC I sourced is here).
My Framework laptop sits a lot not plugged in. I pull it out every week or two to use it. It’s not my daily driver, so spends a lot of time powered off. The main system battery though is never less than 40-60%
So I guess that explains the low RTC battery. If the 11th gen board can’t go more than a few days powered off (especially on older BIOSes), then the rechargeable RTC battery likely gets damaged in a low state of charge.
I actually have a charger for coin cell rechargeable batteries lying around… let me see if the RTC battery will charge. I ordered a new ML1220 which will be here tomorrow.
2 Likes
I doubt BIOS numbers have anything to do with it. I got mine end of July, and upgraded immediately that was 3.7… about 10 days ago I jumped to 3.10… nothing has made a difference.
Be very gentle with the battery removal, and see if the RTC battery holder flexes when you remove the battery. There have been atleast one case reported on this forum where the RTC battery holder’s soldering was loose and it came off the board at one end.
1 Like
My coin cell charger charges at 20ma.
Yup. It took <5 minutes to be “done”. I pulled it off the charger and the coin cell was 3.0v I just checked the cell after 1-2 minutes and it is 2.6v. I’m not sure of the capacity of a ML1220, but this sounds like the stock battery isn’t holding much of a charge anymore.
1 Like
That is very nice and conclusive! Now to see how the new battery does.
Wow… 17mA capacity. That isn’t much lol.
The recommended drain is 0.03mA. I wonder how much current the Framework pulls 
Morning all (well almost afternoon here). Last night I unplugged the laptop, it had been plugged for good 60 hours or so.
Today morning when I tried it didn’t start up on battery.
Plugged in the adapter and it started right up.
Framework support wanted me to take videos of what I was doing, so I’ve done that. Not sure if posting of videos is allowed here, I’ll upload somewhere and post the links here.
For now I’ll leave you with two images of main battery life
- Last night before shutting down
- Today morning (this has been on for 30 minutes now).
Definitely a duff RTC battery. Whether it’s a duff motherboard, I don’t know. I guess we’ll figure out when my replacement battery finally arrives (dang it eBay drop-shipper!)
2 Likes
So today morning it woke up fine on battery. Probably the gap between disconnected and connected wasn’t too big.
I’ve got a replacement battery from eBay but it came in a plastic baggy and has 0.6 V output. I will be damned that made a difference. Probably someone selling off old laptop parts 
I’ll try it out over the weekend.
Today morning’s battery status
That’s little dip last night is when we lost power to the house as I was futzing around with the Kitchen lighting 
Interestingly it didn’t loose as much battery last night as it did the night before
Lost the will to live with this issue.
@Alexander_von_Gluck any luck with your battery swap?
1 Like
Anyone have a non-Amazon source for ML1220 bare cell batteries in the US?
1 Like
@alowndar If your Framework laptop is still in warranty I suppose you could open a ticket… but I’ve not been able to respond to my ticket’s response yet… so yeah, it’s probably going to be slower than Amazon or equivalent.
Morning all, back with my morning update. Today morning was weird. I worked till very late at night last night, about 3:30 and got back at my desk much earlier around 10:16AM. The first three presses on the power button didn’t start it, the fourth one did… That’s a new one. Each were short presses, with maybe half a second gap… I’ll upload the video soon.
I know I haven’t uploaded last two days’ videos either… life!
Main Battery status
Yelp! It died!
So after much dilly-dallying I changed the BIOS battery couple of days ago.
The old battery came out with 3.03V. Left it for almost two days and it still was 3.03V. Concluded my BIOS battery wasn’t the issue. Of course all this while I wasn’t testing for BIOS battery drain issue, because keep it plugged in for 48 hrs and all that.
Earlier today I thought, hmm maybe the power button is broken. So went looking in the forums. First post says do a MB reset and the OP came back saying that fixed it. So I tell myself maybe it wasn’t RTC battery issue at all (original battery still at my desk and still 3.03V.
So I followed the steps for resetting motherboard. Only one thing was off. After leaving it without connected to battery, power and rtc (for about 10 minutes), when I reconnected rtc, then battery, the red m/b lights started blinking again. That’s not a part of the documentation. CORRECTION: it is part of documentation. So that’s correct behaviour.
They stopped blinking after the keyboard was placed back. So I thought, okay, just an intrusion indicator. Put it back together. Plug it in. Press power. Dead. Again Dead. Again Dead. Hold it down for 10…15…20 seconds… still dead!!! Battry charging Indicator is amber. Probably going fron 80 to 100 after the bios reset.
Open it up, take out the “new eBay RTC battery”. Put back original Framework RTc battery. Put it back together. Still dead.
Now I am sat here, wondering how on the earth will I get to that last bit of code that I did not push to master 
@nrp sorry to tag you but is this enough to prove a dodgy mobo? Should I try anything else?
Going to try mobo reset a few more times.
Anybody else?
Now to find a nVME to usb adapter in a hurry.
(Ooh video updates not allowed here. Well pictures are not particularly useful to show blinking lights, are they)
Okay, third time was the charm. It’s booted up now. Coincidentally the battery is charged to 100% now. So not sure if that had anything to do with anything. Previously it was set to 80%.
Sigh!
On the bright side, the laptop lives. On the flip side, still nowhere near knowing for sure what on earth is wrong with it (if anything at all). Given the RTC cell was 3.03V when I took it off and held charge for 2 days, it is not the BIOS battery in my case. But I have videos of weird behaviour before this mobo reset.
Let’s see if the mobo reset ‘fixes’ bootup from battery. I’ll change the title if it does.
Hah!
Shut it down to go into BIOS to set battery charge %, and now it won’t start again. I guess I’ll just forward all the videos to support and see what they have to say!
Here is the series of videos showing last mb reset and then the laptop coming up and finally dying again after shutdown!
Mobo reset Attempt 3 - 1/5 https://piot.blob.core.windows.net/asset-e64953c6-ac90-4a16-a90a-3c38e4850a02/2022-10-13-MbReset-03-01.m4v
Mobo reset Attempt 3 - 2/5 https://piot.blob.core.windows.net/asset-7dcac129-c0ed-4cc6-92f4-4297a4c32dfd/2022-10-13-MbReset-03-02.m4v
Mobo reset Attempt 3 - 3/5 https://piot.blob.core.windows.net/asset-e05b5318-b4ef-4d9c-98dd-c500da6a7e77/2022-10-13-Mbreset-03-03.m4v
Mobo reset Attempt 3 - 4/5 https://piot.blob.core.windows.net/asset-86d05a03-06ff-4162-90a3-439ff3aaab52/2022-10-13-Mbrese-03-04.m4v
Mobo reset Attempt 3 - 5/5 https://piot.blob.core.windows.net/asset-81dfc6f3-cfdb-4328-b08c-7dc20631d93b/2022-10-13-Mbreset-03-05.m4v
Updated URLs to Azure blob storage (Not streaming media, so be cautious if you are on metered networks)
On to the fourth reset of the evening!
2 Likes
Fourth reset of the day and we are back again. The laptop booted up. Never shutting it down ever again 
Mobo reset Attempt 4 - 1/2 https://piot.blob.core.windows.net/asset-ad45c835-4061-4c50-b249-0bf40e370fc4/2022-10-13-MbReset-04-01.m4v
Mobo reset Attempt 4 - 2/2 https://piot.blob.core.windows.net/asset-d6e2f54d-72de-4b1a-bdb2-fcce79978ec9/2022-10-13-MbReset-04-02.m4v
After some initial frustration, there has been positive movement in conversations with Support. I’ll not get ahead of myself here with respect to a solution but it’s moving in the right direction.
In the mean while, I took the laptop off the charge again (glutton for punishment 
) today afternoon. Used it on the Sofa. Put it aside for a few hours. When I tried to open it and use again, it failed to start up. After trying all the tricks above, resigned to mobo reset and opened it up again.
This time, something funny happened. As I inserted the sim pin to eject the RTC battery, the mobo Red LEDs started blinking. So I thought, hmm… let me not do the full reset. Just let it blink for a while then plugged charger in. Kept it plugged in for 5 minutes. Unplugged it. After about 5 seconds the LEDs stopped blinking. Just as if it had completed a MoBo reset.
Packed it up and pressed the power button, back it came.
So I think this is the ‘other issue’ where RTC battery holder is not properly soldered. I have taken very zoomed close ups but it is not visible to the ‘untrained-eye’. Might be a micro fracture or a dry solder.
Will add this to the Support info.
P.S. I DMed @Alexander_von_Gluck and he confirmed the RTC battery swap has helped him. So I think my main initial crib, that this issue was ‘unpredictable’ is no longer true. For my usecase, I am not worried about the 2 week timeout, if it works predictably.
2 Likes
Well then, received my replacement motherboard (like-for-like replacement i7-1185G7) yesterday and just set it up now. This had to be the first thing I do right? Going to keep it plugged in for two days now and then start testing again. Hopefully things are better than the last board 
Thanks to Framework support for sticking around and reviewing all the video clips I took. A motherboard replacement is a costly endeavour for a startup so I understand they have to vet the requests. Intial couple of scripted responses apart, things were fine once I showed all my attempts to get the system to work as it should.
P.S. Windows was very annoying on reboot (after board swap), it refused to use the PIN and somehow didn’t accept the password that was in my password manager. Eventually managed to reset password thanks to the recovery questions, whose random answers were logged correctly in the password manager (didn’t have to re-activate, my license is one bought separately from Framework)
3 Likes
For anyone interested in the list of videos I sent to Framework support
Following videos are in chronological order
-
October 5, 2022 (very early in the morning): After 48 hours on charge, unplug laptop and remove the mag safe plug on
https://piot.blob.core.windows.net/asset-9ea19c1d-5640-4cc3-b208-e122a7a88873/2022-10-05-01.m4v -
October 5, 2022 later in the day: open laptop, press power button no dice. Plug power in, hold button down to get it started.
https://piot.blob.core.windows.net/asset-5da61997-138f-41b3-ba7c-6a8d072f40e0/2022-10-05-02.m4v -
October 6, 2022 (very early in the morning): unplug laptop and remove power plug and close lid
https://piot.blob.core.windows.net/asset-d92ee47c-2990-4c5e-b292-e66a88efa83f/2022-10-06-01.m4v -
October 6, 2022 (later in the day): Open lid, press power button, and it starts up without issue
https://piot.blob.core.windows.net/asset-5a884272-14bc-43f8-88fe-8efb422d95c3/2022-10-06-02.m4v -
October 7, 2022 (first thing in the morning): Open lid of unplugged laptop, press button 5 times for it to start (unplugged)
https://piot.blob.core.windows.net/asset-2125fdbc-5031-4d65-85bf-f40e8a802c57/2022-10-07-01.m4v -
October 8, 2002 (first thing in the morning): Open lid of the unplugged laptop, press power button multiple times no response. Finally hold power button down to force it to start.
https://piot.blob.core.windows.net/asset-6ad6cf71-dacd-451a-a78e-329652d42b80/2022-10-08-01.m4v
End of the saga
It has been more than a month using the laptop any-which-way I want (keeping the 21 days time ticker in mind), and the laptop has behaved as expected.
One issue I found was the power button would not respond to first press at times (after the m/b replacement). However after I recorded it happenning a few times I realised I had to press but using full face of my finger against the button for it to register a press properly (as opposed to tip of finger or nail). Not sure if this is a windows bug/hardware bug or “works as designed”, but ever since I started using the full face of my finger, the issue went away. I am so exhausted with this process that I didn’t press any further after the first request for more info on possible power button issues got me an article about rearranging wires around the hinge, which can potentially cause automatic pressing of the button (the opposite of my issue).
Today I dropped the RMA package off at UPS and calling this saga closed. I’ve learned a lot from everyone on this thread. So thank you all, and thanks for bearing with me.
Will I buy another Framework? Probably yes, the extensibility features are still unbeatable when compared to other Libre h/w vendors.
3 Likes