Agreed with @MRMsys. The 12th Gen BIOS needs some prioritization. The flakiness of the USB-A expansion cards is really annoying.
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Yes, I have to say that prior to the update here the USB-A cards were rock solid with no problems showing. Since the update to 3.06 about 70% of the time they don’t work and need to have the card pulled out and reinserted to get them functioning properly again (not good for wear and tear on the mainboard ports if this remains for too long). Just unplugging the attached device and reinserting it doesn’t help. Rather strangely, sometimes, maybe 30% of the time, they do work without popping out the whole card here. It seems that the longer the shutdown is the more likely it is that the USB-A cards will fail.
I notice it appears to be only after a full shutdown that this happens. I’m not aware of it happening from a reboot if the card had a device attached and working previously though. Also simply rebooting won’t fix a malfunctioning card, though rebooting doesn’t seem to cause any issues here if the card is already working.
I did my BIOS upgrade about 3 to 4 weeks ago.
Edit: I should note that I also regularly use a USB-C card and a HDMI card, both of these are still functioning perfectly no matter what port they are attached to; they are still “rock solid” 
.
@yetiman_64 Interesting, I have yet to encounter this issue and I updated about a month ago as well. I wouldn’t worry about the mobo side ports tho. USBC is rated for thousands of cycles and perfect alignment ensures zero torque on the socket. It should be fine. Terrible for UX tho.
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Thanks, I wasn’t sure about that. A bit of a relief to hear that.
I try to avoid the issue as much as possible by leaving the machine running as long as possible and minimize any shutting down. I’ve often left the machine running (usually playing music etc) for up to 4 or 5 days at a time but I do shut down if I leave the house for any length of time, I don’t leave it running unattended. As I noted restarts seem OK though.
Cheers, yeti.
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To strike a blow for framework: Other vendors, even the hailed Lenovo with their business grade devices, won’t give you any BIOS beta releases nor updates on their plan. They’ll release whenever they got a new version, with very little notes on changes. Often it’s just “CVE … + Bugfixes” and you need to buy the really high-priced devices to still receive updates after 1 or 2 years. So, it’s already nice that framework gives us informative changelogs, the ability to test beta releases and that they still push out regular updates for their 11th Gen boards after 1 1/2 years.
But I’m also with you. CVEs should be fixed and released with some priority, and more optional updates (like thunderbolt changes) can be pushed with another update afterwards. That might be something that framework may be able to improve upon.
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I think it’s great to commend Framework on what they’ve done well (good release notes?) I think it’s also important to be clear eyed about what they’ve done poorly (having anything close to a decent release cadence for BIOS updates).
Lenovo on their current-gen X1 Carbon also has fixes and CVEs in their release notes, but their cadence is a release about every 2 months.
Framework licenses an Insyde BIOS and CVE fixes/patches are typically included as part of that licensing, but we actually don’t have any visibility/transparency on how Framework is handling their BIOS updates (in-house, contracted, etc), so I don’t think we can make any comments on why their release cycles are so long, but multi-month periods of radio silence I don’t think really instills confidence.
BTW, personally I wouldn’t call 0 BIOS releases over 9 months for 12th-gen or 3 releases over 1.75 years for the 11th-gen “regular updates” exactly. The 11th-gen 3.10 release was last August (about 7-8mo ago), the 3.07 release looks like it was released December 2021. Average seems to be about 1 release/year if you don’t count the 0-day update released right after launch.
- Framework Laptop BIOS and Driver Releases (12th Gen Intel® Core™)
- Framework Laptop BIOS and Driver Releases (11th Gen Intel® Core™)
(Also, you can search for “BIOS team” or “FW team” in Lenovo’s forums to see that while it’s not all roses, there are quite a few Lenovo employees that are interacting frequently w/ customers about their system issues across all their models.)
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Seems I may have spoken too soon. I turned on the laptop after about 1 1/2 days shut down and one USB-A card and the HDMI card were both down. A USB-A card and a USB-C card on the opposite side were both OK. It seems today only the RHS (near the power button) is affected. I popped both the RHS cards out and reinserted and they both started working.
I have not noticed before if only one side is affected but that may be because I tend to run the machine for long periods without shutting down. This is the first time I’ve seen the HDMI card act this way and may have wrongly assumed it was only the USB-A cards.
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Try the BIOS update again. The first time you run it, it will alter the TB timer controllers on the side the power is plugged in (or maybe vice-versa). Swap the power to the other side, then run the update again.
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Yes, I’ll give that a try. It may take a week or so as I am busy for the next few days and may be heading out for up to a week. I’ll persevere with it like this till I get back. That sounds like a good idea; I’ll give it a shot and report back any results/changes. Thanks Fraoch.
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I tried that (swapping power to the other side and performing the upgrade again).
I still have to periodically reinsert my USB-A cards.
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Hey Framework. Maybe it’s time to bring in some assistance to wrap this stuff up. It’s feeling like you don’t have the proper resources to figure this out.
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@Brent_Douglas Perhaps you don’t know this but the BIOS is contracted out to Insyde. They don’t dev it themselves. I’m not excusing how long this BIOS has been in beta but it would be in error to assert that they don’t have assistance.
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This delay is lowering my confidence of my framework investment.
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@Brent_Douglas What? What does that even mean? Confidence in what? This sounds like you don’t know how these updates are rolled out. Granted it is taking an absurdly long time to move out of beta, I’ll not contest that but I think it’s ridiculous to draw any meaningful conclusion on long-term support from this thread or this beta.
Given the issues that have popped up in this thread, it isn’t unlikely that FW contacted Insyde to patch the BIOS to address these problems before a final release and yes, once again, Insyde is slow to do so. That’s the theory that I’m putting my monopoly money on.
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Good day gentlemen and gentlewomen
I’m confirming that after that power of retimer reset, right ports work for thunderbolt… Sorta.
I’m having some tb4 instability with a “retimer disconnected” in the dmesg.
Thanks for the transparency you provided us, framework team.
@GhostLegion I think the comment is a valid frustration. While I understand why they are using a third party contractor it does not mean I have to be happy about it. They really should prioritize making the hires necessary to do this in house, to commit to regular updates, and to essentially strive to provide an enterprise grade product. I hope that as time goes by they get closer and closer to achieving that. Simply the user appears frustrated that some very basic items don’t work right, are flaky, or don’t appear to be getting the appropriate amount of attention. It is an area where Frameworks close mouthed approach is not helpful.
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Which enterprise manufacture makes their own bioses? for consumer level hardware for now.
Ill wait.
Is there are way to make a backup of the firmware (for all parts im updating) before updating?
I generally don’t buy consumer grade hardware, and really don’t consider the Framework consumer grade. Guess we should all lower out expectations, or desires, however seeing as how this is their only product and taking into consideration their stated goals they are going to have to move in that direction eventually.
Guess I was spoiled with Thinkpads.
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I dont see what people are complaining about. My experience of laptop manufacturers is they MIGHT release ONE bios update for any given model if and only if there is a serious problem with the shipped version, and they MIGHT release another to further restrict consumer choice if they find out that consumers are doing things to bypass restrictions in the original version. (Hello HP, retroactively encrypting your bioses to stop people defeating your anti-consumer hardware whitelists)
Other than that, you can get stuffed, especially if it’s more than a year old, because they aren’t interested in it anymore.
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