I was not willing to rely upon replacing batteries on a regular basis to mitigate a design flaw. I have had laptops since 720 floppies, so I expect a certain constant level of performance.
I fried the motherboard. Still like Framework, so advice on which motherboard to buy to drop into my now defunct 11 laptop.
It might be worth it to take your laptop back to those shops to see if they can fix it. I’ve been watching the various microsoldering youtube channels for years and they can sometimes work magic on boards. If you’ve knocked off components, a legit repair shop can get the schematics from framework to find out what components need to be purchased and placed back on the board. If the traces are destroyed they might be able to lay down a jumper wire. But I imagine any repair would be more than the initial quote for soldering the battery on so that’s going to be a choice between simple new replacement vs repaired old board.
Regardless, I admire your inadvisable bravery to make your first soldering attempt a microsoldering attempt on a real laptop!
I’d wager a guess at 200-400 to fix the board. Depending on what went wrong, could be as simple as replacing a fuse, could be something entirely. Considering you can buy i7’s from 399 new, may not be worth it unless you can find someone to do the repair for 200 or less. Might be worth going over the board with a magnifying glass and looking for stray solder blobs just to rule that out.
Out of curiosity, did you disconnect the battery when you attempted the mod?
James,
Too late fried it. Advice on a new motherboard to drop into the laptop? Tks.
I can’t say what I want to here. The moderator censures posts
If you need one now, then a 13th gen board will do nicely. If you can wait, then wait for the AMD board initial reviews to show up…then you can decide if you want to go with the 13th gen or Ryzen 7xxx.
The i7-1360p is likely decent…with all the fixes (TB certified, no RTC coin battery needed, current gen), and double the performance of the i7-1165g7, at slightly more than double the price…that makes sense to me instead of getting any 11th or 12th gen.
Elite
Yes, I did disconnect it. Looking at prices here for dropin motherboard 12, not worth it. Better to look for a complete laptop out there.
Second,
13 Gen looks good, but will see what the wallet can do right now. Am using that cheap Micro laptop with 4gigs memory. Basic, but usable for some things.
@Nicholas_C_DeBord - Sorry it didn’t work out - but you had a go. I’d wait for the AMD if you can but the 13th gen intel will also be fine.
I remember a longer post (you were the one with the IBM 360 experience, right?) and wanted to reply with some tips and tricks – but when I got round to do it a few hours later it was gone.
IIRC, that post contained none of: foul language, personal insults, rants against Framework/other users nor political or religious, advertising, trolling, destructive pranks, … etc. A perfectly friendly post.
I thought you retracted it (maybe embarrassed about the soldering beginner skills) and without something to reply to left it at that.
Could it be possible that we have here a) a technical issue (posts auto-vanish), or b) outsourced moderation to someone incompetent or overeager?
The issue is that the post (at least the one I saw) had a lot of talk about how Framework should or shouldn’t have handled the RTC issue. That argument has been waged for months and it is not the topic of this thread. This thread is about the rework instructions for fixing the issue, not arguing about what “should” have been done. When that topic comes up it tends to re-fan the flames of the debate and this thread starts to again fill with back and forth about it. The moderators have been saying for a long time that this thread is not about that and to please keep those posts out of this thread so it doesn’t start to snowball into a massive debate again that overshadows what this thread should be about.
Ah, OK. I understand.
I like Framework. At an advanced age (77 now), I still enjoy the tech world. Wrote about it for a few years, among others. Like most seniors, I digress and tell stories. Would I wish I had done a competent job soldering the mainboard? You bet. Fried it, that’s life.
NPR went further than others (Macbook, for example) in fixing a design flaw. Did he go far enough to make whole the end user? Debatable. The moderator tried to keep this on message and that is a fair description of the job. I was a Sysop on CompuServe once upon a time, so see the problems.
I will either drop in a 12 motherboard or look elsewhere. Nice little laptop with flaws.
The 13th looks like a good bet. Will look at it. Thanks. Money is the issue at my age.
Yup, that was exactly what happened, hence my message that I had removed off-topic messages. Please consider other possibilities (or reach out via mod messages to ask what happened) before calling us “incompetent”.
Since we’re no longer discussing the rework itself, I’ve gone ahead and split this conversation out into a new thread about replacement mainboards to keep the other thread on-topic.
Which board did you have? Are you in the US? If you are looking to save money, would you be interested in an 11th gen i5?
Elite,
Probably a dupe on my part, but yes I disconnected the battery. Yes, facing a 160 minimum repair at a NYC shop, with price only an estimate, I went for it myself. Sigh.
What motherboard should I drop into this chasis I wonder?
Big T
After my barbecue of my I5, I think I’ll stay away from 11gen Frameworks!
@Nicholas_C_DeBord - sorry to hear that you ran into troubles. Can you give me details on how you “fried” the board? Did you overheat something, short something out, accidentally desolder components, other? Are you willing to share pictures of the carnage?
As others note, a repair shop likely can fix the damage unless something went terribly astray.
If it looks like it may be something simple I’m in the extended area and would be willing to look at it for you if you wish. Please note that I am just a user, I am no expert in this stuff, but if there’s a chance that I could help I would be happy to try.
Thanks to everyone here. I carefully scraped off a glob of solder, put the old battery back in and VOILA! My laptop (now a desktop forever I’m afraid) is working again. Ask me if I know what I’m doing? (Don’t answer, you already know,)
I’m just a good writer, 'Nam Vets back in the day, tech, design, political and general interest and these days, non-profit grants for kids). Woo Woo!
Nick
If you don’t want to take it to a shop, but still want to do the rework, let me know. If you want to make the trek to my neck of the woods I can try to do it for you. I did it on my two 11th gen setups and they both are working. I’d be happy to do it to help out a member of the community. Keeping in mind, again, that I am not a professional at this. But I did buy some basic equipment to help me do these (clamps, basic magnifying stand, not a microscope, and so on).
Very happy to hear that your board was not in fact dead.