Blinking LED color pattern on startup: how to interpret it?

Community Support
1

Hi all, I own a Framework Laptop DIY Edition (12th Gen Intel).

About ~15s after powering on, the LED on the side starts blinking in a color pattern. The pattern is as follows:
W, GGGG GGGG GGGG, O, G, BB, G, B, GGG
W stands for white, G is green, O is orange, B is blue.

What does the pattern mean? Am I having a hardware problem? My Ubuntu is booting up only sometimes, most of the time it gets stuck after printing lots of seemingly normal log messages (just stops there for ever with a spinning fan; in recovery mode it does boot up). I do want to debug this Ubuntu and get it back to working state but first I would like to understand the LED pattern because I believe it might be the key to the issue. (That’s why I’m not posting other details for now)

Please help me understand the message behind the color pattern.

2

Side LED colours (for 12th gen) are documented here: My Framework Laptop (Intel 12th Gen Intel® Core™) is not powering on.

This would suggest it’s failing to post (3 blue post code bits), though I’m unsure how to interpret that. I suggest contacting support with this info.

3

B is not good, but you have to ask support. I don’t know of a list what each bit means.

4

Blue doesn’t mean not good. Everything after the orange is a binary bit. Blue means a 1, Green means a 0. That binary sequence can be translated to hexadecimal and interpreted from here: Framework Laptop port80 codes · GitHub

1 Like
5

0x68 is not in the list. I GBBGBGGG correct?

6

Thank you very much for replies.
Yes, it is definitely GBBGBGGG (I have a video which I watched slowly ten times), and that I believe means 0x16, not 0x68 (nor 0x86). It still doesn’t make sense to me because 0x16 is BDS_CONNECT_CONSOLE_IN “Keyboard Controller, Keyboard and Moust initial” in the table. Are you sure this is the correct table? Are “port80 codes” the same as “post codes”? These “port80 codes” aren’t looking like error codes to me.

7

This is the video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/EiaDxh7shKHgP8Ts5 (action starts at 0:15)

8

I’ve confirmed with resident embedded controller firmware expert DHowett: port 80 is the EC’s hardware connection to the rest of the system (manufacturer diagnostics port) over which POST codes are transmitted.

That said, that list may only apply to 11th gen. I’m not sure if the codes are still the same. The codes are not error codes, but rather self-test steps (POST being Power-On Self-Test). I believe it’s telling you what check failed.

Generally speaking, once you get into the “interpreting post code bits” step, it’s best to contact support. They’ll be able to help diagnose the problem including going back and forth with engineering if necessary.