12th Gen Intel Core BIOS 3.09 Release BETA - Held

Pine64?

Makers of Pinephone, PineTab, etc

Basically, they build the hardware and release it, asking the community to do the work of building functioning drivers etc. They sell everything with a big warning that functionality is not guaranteed and only hardware defects are warrantied. They sell stuff cheap though so it doesn’t feel too bad…that and they do tell you before you buy.

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Thanks for the reply.

To be clear, my intent here is not to defend Framework’s handling of firmware updates.

My opinion, which is all that this is, is that by a literal definition, DOA does not apply. I accept that that is splitting hairs. In a somewhat similar vein, they are at least making some effort as opposed to none. I understand that said effort to date has not been very good, and depending upon one’s use case and needs, worth little.

Have a good day.

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I’ve upgraded to 3.09 via fwupdmgr before noticing this thread.

After upgrading the laptop slowed down enormously and was barely usable. I’ve fixed it by downgrading back to 3.08.

Why is such a buggy release still available in fwupdmgr? I didn’t see any warning at all! I was using the fwupdmgr console tool. To be honest, I’m getting a little bit impatient with all those BIOS issues I’ve had with this machine.

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Don’t expect any hope :confused:

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update to bios-3-09-release-beta with linux EFI.zip without any problems. thx

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So?

Nuke the update without any communication about what’s going on going forward? Why am I not surprised?

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Do you have more info now?
Are all plattforms affected? Are there known workarounds (like enforcing a higher minimum cpu freq)? When are you planning to release a fix?

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look at the thread. they dont care about communicating or bothering anymore.

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mhm at least a rough eta would be nice so I know if I should take the risk of frying my mainboard by flashing back to the last version (already lost a mainboard once that way) or leave this thing lying around collecting dust until the fixed version is available which might bring it back to a usable state.

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The weird part to me is that they do seem to care at least a little. This update exists, for example. They’re still doing work in some capacity on these boards.

In my experience (SWE now, industrial automation previously), if I pushed a buggy change to customers like this I’d be expected to have it fixed within a few hours at most. In rare cases where we had multiple P0 issues during staffing shortages I’ve seen some low-priority bugs stick around for a week, but that’s about the longest I’ve seen a customer-facing bug live in my career (at least a bug assigned to my backlog, anyway).

So I’m really curious what causes these nearly year-long development cycles at framework. Their timescale is glacial compared to everything else I’m used to. The pace feels slow even for a single full-time firmware developer; maybe they’ve got a single dev shared between firmware and their website? :joy:

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Yes, you are almost expressing my thoughts.
There is another thing: the lack of communication with the community. They release a beta, ask for feedback, but hardly comment on that feedback.
I mean, for example, a lot of changes under the hood will go unnoticed by most users. But something as obvious as a changed fan curve should be noticed by most people. Yet there is no trace of any comment on it. A bug? A feature? …?
But, well, we’re used to that from the 3.06 and 3.08 betas, aren’t we?

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I am also a software developer and I agree in most cases, but firmware is really another level. With all the tests on different platforms and configurations I expected it to be minimum a week.

But I hate the lack of communication. Hopefully they handle the communication in their relationships different. :joy:

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After countless months of waiting, I’ve given up on expecting them to improve on this front :confused:
Firmware updates should be in the top 3 priorities for these kinds of businesses, so I am dumbfounded why they havent shelled out to hire a team of experts.
More engineers to work on a better heatsink would be fantastic, too, but firmware comes first.

I don’t want to complain, I’m just genuinely so disappointed in Framework for this situation.

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I popped over from the AMD firmware thread to see whether things were as bad on the Intel side as they are on the AMD side.

They are (at least approximately). :nauseated_face:

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What truly surprises me the most is how this release, even though beta, could pass QA.

I mean, you make a firmware update specifically to address fan/load/heating issues and the slightest kind of load triggers an issue and you don’t notice that?

It took me like 3 minutes as a regular user to run into this bug after updating.

As much as I appreciate Framework, I wonder if someone did ever test this release or how it was tested to not notice this.

How is the QA process looking like here?

I work in IT as well and if we would deliver software with such obvious issues that any kind of serious testing must have found in minutes we would not have to deliver any more software to them in the future because we would be fired very quickly.

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I honestly don’t see how FW thought they could get away with marketing such a enthusiast oriented machine and think they could abandon the machines after shipping them with such glaring and deal breaking bugs, and not have them be called out on it?! How has Nirav not died of embarrassment? It actually astounds me.

I think we should contact the writer at Ars who wrote the last story andrew.cunningham@arstechnica.com, it seems to be the only way we get any response from anyone else than forum moderators.

When we just shout into the void that is our own respective firmware threads, (hi @JL_Framework !), I guess it really doesn’t achieve anything. The word needs to be out to ward off potential buyers until FW pull their socks up.

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Heads up: the 3.09 update may have disabled my laptop’s USB charging and power capability. (EDIT 2: Probably not, see end of post.)

I applied the update from LVFS on Wednesday (AU time), everything seemed fine. On Friday afternoon I’d been working on my laptop all day in its usual Thunderbolt 3 dock (which was working but had - unusually - randomly reset a couple of times earlier in the day). I got a notification I had 10% battery left. Trying various charger swaps, reboots, full power off, etc. I saw the battery creep down to 0%.

Since then the laptop has not powered back on. I get an amber light on the charge port but mains power monitor shows less than 3W draw at the wall and even leaving it overnight it hasn’t come good. For a while the power button light would come on briefly but now it doesn’t come on at all.

Have followed the (presumably applicable to 12th gen) Fully Resetting the Mainboard State guide twice and the process seems to complete but no meaningful difference (I did see the solid green LED for DRAM training for a while but then the laptop turned off again). Also tried booting with the battery disconnected but see no power button light at all.

I’ve sent support an email with even more details, and am waiting to hear back. Of course its possible this total failure after updating is a coincidence, but wanted to post in case anyone else sees the same. Presumably downgrading is an option, if quick enough!

EDIT: Support have concluded that my main board failed, and that I need to buy a new one. This may be so, and the proximity to the firmware update just a coincidence.

EDIT 2: I managed to get some charge in the battery, booted to EFI, and downgraded all components to the 3.08 BIOS versions. It still doesn’t draw any power from AC, so I think this is probably an unrelated hardware failure.

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ItĀ“s so sad to see the same misbehaviour of the FW team like Dutch smartphone manufacturer Fairphone does: Not caring about their released hardware and leaving the owners completely alone with the issues they have plus not communicating with the community. I was pretty active in the Fairphone community and never understood this behaviour customer-unfriendly behaviour, although discussing it a lot with users and asking clarifying questions to the FF team. Eventually, due to European/German consumer laws, I was able to get a full sales price refund after FF wasnt able to fix my issues after 18 month. I was still sad about that as I really like the FF & FW product concepts. However, for me itĀ“s clear to not buy hardware of both companies anymore…

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Please keep this thread on topic. Off-topic posts removed.

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