BIOS Update: 3.04 → 3.19?

Framework Laptop 13
1

I recently decided that I wanted to update the BIOS. As far as I understood it, the general BIOS update guidance has always been “don’t update unless you’re having issues”, but I’m having issues:

  • As long as I’ve had the laptop, it’s never been able to power down properly consistently. Usually this is when it’s connected to an external monitor, but other times it seems unrelated.
  • As of yesterday, I’m also seeing issues in which it sometimes seems to detect worse power delivery from the charger, and locks the core clock speed to 400 MHz. This one is preventing me from using the laptop properly.

I checked the latest BIOS update page, but having seen notes about specific versions, I’m not exactly clear on whether I’ll need to do multiple jumps to catch up. I figured it was better to check here and make sure first before potentially bricking the laptop on which I’m dependent for my livelihood.

Basically, my current BIOS version is 3.04 and I’d like to upgrade to the latest (3.19). I’m assuming I can’t do the update in one jump, so which updates should I do? And, for future reference, how might I determine that myself?

Thanks in advance for your help.

For reference, here is my BIOS information. I’m running Pop!_OS 22.04:

Vendor: INSYDE Corp.
Version: 03.04
Release Date: 07/15/2022
Address: 0xE0000

product: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1260P
vendor: Intel Corp.
physical id: 4
bus info: cpu@0
version: 6.154.3
2

The BIOS updates are also associated a particular version of fwupdmgr. Often 2.0.16 or above is needed.

Pop OS 22.04 is quite old, but you might be able to get a newer fwupdmgr using snap or something like that.

3

Okay…I’m sorry, what does this mean for me in practice? Once I get to 3.19, I need to use the flatpak version of fwupd if I want to do manual firmware updates (for the fingerprint sensor?)? Is there anything else?

Also, I’m still unclear on the correct BIOS upgrade path.

4

There is a Linux tool called “fwupdmgr” that handles upgrades for you. So it will automatically know which firmware versions you need to step through to get from 3.04 to 3.19.
I was also saying that the “fwupdmgr” tool would need to be version 2.0.16 or above.

If you are doing it more manually, with the EFI methods, then you will need to read all the release notes of every intermediate version, in order to work out which intermediate versions are needed.

You can find all notes about previous versions here:
https://community.frame.work/tag/bios-announcement