It’s not “cheaper” to desolder the flash chip unless you have engineers working without salary.
This latest debacle has already cost more than a new laptop in lost productivity. While we can accept occasional hardware issues, the widespread bricking of Framework computers, and Framework’s unwillingness to address the problem, is not acceptable. With that in mind, fixing bricked Framework laptops even at zero cost is too expensive, as one has to assume the laptop can be bricked again by known-broken firmware, incurring additional lost productivity.
If Framework had pulled the bad BIOS when they were informed about the problem, that that would have saved us a lot of headache and costs. As I write this, more laptops are getting bricked.
(While I am not familiar with how exactly Framework’s BIOS upgrade works, it seems unlikely that the update method matters. Say that there is a bug in the Linux fwupdate stuff? But surely the images are cryptographically signed? If fwupdate messes up its download, the new image would be rejected!)
My mainboard was only about a month old when it bricked from this bios update, so it affects the latest batches of mainboards too. The mainboard was a warranty replacement of a prior one that had charging/power issues.
It is shocking to me that there are now numerous threads, some very lengthy and detailed, and that framework’s only official response so far are private warranty responses; yet they are still posting new marketing everyday of their reliability, support, repairability and pushing new hardware. It seems so disconnected. I’m blessed to be in Australia where there is Australia Consumer Law that protects us from such shenanigans, but the lack of compassionate and mission orientated communication from Framework on this has had made me really double take my recommendations of Framework; and the longer there isn’t such communication, the deeper the said disconnect and my concern grows.
It’s not “cheaper” to desolder the flash chip unless you have engineers working without salary.
Not only that, resorting to these hobbyist shenanigans feels totally different when you know the only reason for it is that FW can’t be bothered to stand behind their product.
You worked hard on something but it still needs a little tinkering sometimes? Fine. That’s actually kind of fun. You shipped me something you already knew was shoddy, and then told me to fuck off and pony up $500 more when I lost the die-roll and it broke my hardware? That’s not fun. That doesn’t feel good at all.
(I don’t even have a FW13, let along a bricked one; I am only in this because I was reading up trying to figure out if I should apply the current update for my FW16. Even hearing about it secondhand I am appalled on behalf of the people impacted though.)
This is still happening. I used dolphin to update to Fedora 44 and clicked update all and laptop bricked. The diagnostic leds are all green and everything powers on but no display
Why the bios update is still available is baffling
At this point for this release version. Running it in anything except the UEFI USB method is really taking chances if it wil update correctly.
Try an external display and see if that still works.
It could just be coinciding with a display cable that has managed to work its way loose, or it was a little loose and finally just separated enough to no longer display a signal.
I don’t know for sure, but I suspect the problem is actually something in the older BIOSs. It certainly looks like nothing in your BIOS gets updated until the first time you reboot after you run the update file, which means it’s still the old BIOS running while the flashing happens.
Weirdly my own 7040 series FW13 has been updated to every single BIOS version, starting from 3.03 with zero issues. I am careful though, for instance I disconnect everything except the charger before upgrading.
Just a heads up - the clock, on their liability about a BIOS update they provided to you, starts when you get the BIOS update and not when you purchased the machine. Check your local laws obviously, but if they ship you an update that you applied in the recommended standard manner and then it ruins your machine, then most jurisdictions consider them responsible, whenever or however the machine was purchased. “Warranty” on the original machine against failures not caused by some external factor is just totally irrelevant.
It may be recoverable with a low level BIOS flash (directly to the flash chip), but it takes the tools and patience to accomplish this.
Maybe see if a local repair shop has a programmer and is willing to quote a price to recover the existing image (want to have this for the serial info it contains)