yes, and to make it clear - this is the case for every single laptop out there. The mainboard side connector&pinout on all laptops is always custom, there’s no standard. The only part standardized is the panel-side connector type and pinout.
The standard Framework cable only carries 40-pin hi-res signals, no touch.
not at the moment. Better way to put it - we haven’t found a way yet 
I haven’t seen evidence of such panels. The high-res-with-touch panels I’ve seen, have touch on a separate connector and use high-res 40-pin eDP pinout. Please do share if you found something (would love to put it here!), but as far as I’m aware, such panels don’t exist. So, 2 types of 40-pin eDP panel connectors, not 3.
Yes, the Framework eDP cable uses the high-res eDP pinout.
The FrmW eDP cable only carries high-speed data lanes to the 40-pin high-res panel connector, and doesn’t carry touch signals. It does carry all the lanes available - that is, 4 of them.
On the mainboard-side custom connector, there’s provisions for both high-res eDP (4-lane) and touch. The touch signals on the mainboard-side connector aren’t used in anything we’re aware of, except research from someone on Discord that I don’t currently have link for.
BTW, the mainboard-side connector happens to also be 40-pin! Confusing! I suggest we just call it the “mainboard-side connector”, omitting pin amount to avoid mixing it up with panel-side 40-pin connectors.
Yes on the former, idk what you mean on the latter.
Yes, for some, it seems that 5V is used as touch voltage. Regardless, this is the smallest of our problems at the moment, and is easy to work around.
Sure, find a 40-pin high-res (touch-less or with touch on different connector) panel and plug it in. Perhaps, check if the pinout’s matching, but it’s standardized enough that it ought to.
Nuts, I was all excited to draw up an adapter board today but there’s no PCB-mounted mating connector for the eDP connector on the Framework mainboard. Until we can buy the cable separate from the panel, I think the panel may be the only screen we can practically attach, regardless of what could work in theory.
yep. That said, we’re looking for other options still - there ought to be a way around having to buy a cable separately somehow!
I think I saw a high-res panel with touch through a single 40-pin connector a couple of months ago (was it called touch-on-cell technology?), but the size of the panel was definitely not framework-compatible.
I’m very interested! do you recall which laptop the panel was for?
BTW, high-res => higher than 1080p, as a rule of thumb, I’ve always seen 768p use 1 lane and 1080p use 2 lanes, everything beyond that seems to go with 4. “Seen” and “seems” because my experience, while broad, is still limited. For instance, if a display does 5.4GHz lanes as opposed to the usual 2.7GHz (including the Framework panel), it could do >1080p over two lanes. There could be displays that have 5.4GHz support, it’s just that I haven’t encountered one yet.
Unfortunately, no.
I came across the listing by chance, searching for some completely unrelated spare parts for a microwave on ebay, aliexpress or other marketplace. It was shown as one of those intriguing “similar/related items” that makes you wonder how an algorithm could have connected those things. But mentioning on-cell (or in-cell?) touch 40 pin made me curious enough to click on the link.
As far as I remember, the panel was listed only under its panel model number (without mentioning a compatible laptop model or manufacturer) as new and only available for pre-order at the moment (not yet delivered? sold-out? wrong location?), it was larger than 14 inch (15.6 inch maybe?), had a “standard”-sized eDP 40 pin connector, 16:9 (or maybe 16:10) format, was LCD not OLED. The description mentioned a (for me) rather odd resolution higher than FullHD but less than 2560 × … and asked you to contact the seller with the complete model number (+ revision) of your laptop before ordering.
A later search for smaller panels with on-/in-cell touch revealed a number of “standard” 40-pin panels with a resolution of 1366 × 768 and some 1920 × 1080 panels with “narrow” 40-pin connectors.
Edit: I’ve found one discontinued UHD model with - according to panelook.com - on-cell touch and 4-lane 40-pin eDP connector that might have been used for a Dell 15 Inspiron 7559 (pictures don’t show an additional digitizer cable or connector at least). However, that’s not the one I stumbled upon 2 months ago.
Thanks Arya. I wasn’t aware touch was sometimes a separate connector. So when Framework says their laptops have touch functionality to be brought out later, that means not in the eDP connector correct?
What this does mean is that we can swap the display for different ones that may have a wider color gamut. I’m most interested in something that gets closer to adobe RGB or DCIp3. The 3000x2000 OLED looks interesting, does OLED cause any issues since most other screens are IPS? Power supply requirements might be in question for what framework supplies.
@Arya I found this panel on panelook.com and from the photos it seems to have only one 40-pin eDP connector and touchescreen support.
Going through panelook’s filters, there are no 3:2 hi-rez panels with touch support (using eDP port).
You do have the Microsoft Surface Laptops which do have 3:2 screens with ~1440p resolution and touchscreen but I do not know what connectors they use. Removing the eDP requirement from panelook still gives me no results…
I’ve also looked at other Microsoft Surface panels on eBay but they seem to use a 40-pin eDP connector for the actual display and 2 other connectors for presumably touch and (maybe) stylus.
Yes, if you are trying to get touch enabled, then you need to sort out how to get that part of the cable into a usb input I’m guessing. It is my understanding the eDP 40pin cable on the FrameWork does not support touch. It requires a separate connector from the eDP. So don’t get tricked into a 1080p screen with touch and an eDP 40 pin cable because that won’t work.
I have my old laptop that I’m planning to sell to get some money back since my Framework upgrade and I wanted to see if that display would work. Unfortunately, that one is 30-pin eDP. I have some other spare panels at home (salvaged from monitors) maybe one of them will work.
For science!
I don’t think you will have luck doing it.
Framework’s connector does support touch signals.
github.com/FrameworkComputer/Mainboard/blob/main/Electrical/Pinouts.md
Display Interface
IPEX 20879-040E connector used to interface to an eDP display. Note that there are signals defined for both USB 2.0 and I2C touchscreens.
That’s great new if for sure it’s in there. The eDP 40 pin cables which support touch likely do not support high resolutions. Those screens use a separate usb cable for touch, or a 50 pin cable. The biggest problem is that nobody has tried and reported on this entire forum. I recall the manufacturer saying the touch would be a separate cable. It would be nice for Framework to plug one in and report what works. I would love someone here to try and report back. I just bought the matte version of our screen and will swap it out next month.
i found a great panel: ATNA33TP01. its a 4k oled 13.3 (16:9) inch panel with touch & stylus support. but it have 2 port (i guess it’s edp) and a socket (only few pin connected, i guess it’s for i2c touch/stylus). currently i didn’t find any datasheet about it. (this panel even not available on panelook.com). is it possible to use it on framework mainboard? (ignore the chassis)
Is anyone still looking into connecting a different screen to the eDP connector? I am looking into it too. I am not sure I can pull it out with my knowledge but i want to give it a try and I’m willing to buy a panel to test if I’m confident it is viable.
This is the summary I got from reading all the posts here and some around the web:
The eDP connection Framework uses is 40pins. There seems to be two pinout configurations for displays using eDP 40 pins connections (posted by @Arya above), one for panels with touch and 2 eDP lines (low resolution, usually 1080p or less) and another one for no touch and 4 eDP lines (higher resolutions).
The FW 13.5" display follows exactly the second pinout configuration (no touch and 4 eDP lines) of the link above, as seen in the FW display docs pinout.
The problem seems to be that the FW motherboard 40 pin connector does not follow any of the 2 connections and (maybe?) is custom. As seen in the FW motherboard docs display pinout, it has 4 eDP lines and also touch (seems both usb and i2c, as seen in page 3 of the 11gen intel motherboard pdf).
This seems to be the reason as to why FW uses a custom cable to connect the 40 pin FW motherboard custom(?) pinout to the 40 pin no touch 4 eDP lines “standard” pinout of the FW 13.5" display. The cable must reroute the pins as necessary and must leave other pins (touch ones) unconnected.
Also, the display pinouts (both types) have 4 lcd power lines and 4 backlight power lines, but the FW motherboard has only 3 of each. The good news is that the FW motherboard provides 3.3V in the lcd power line, which seems to be the common voltage used in modern laptop displays. Some older displays use 5V so always check. The backlight voltage (usually a big range so easier to match) and both available currents need to be adequate too.
If all the above is correct, it seems that if we want to use a 40 pin no touch 4 eDP line display, it should work by connecting it to the FW 40 pin cable as it should have the same pinout as the FW 13.5" display. The voltage and available current of the lcd and backlight lines should be checked for compatibility too. Evidence of this is what @Paul_Combe says:
The internal display worked with the external off the shell DP to eDP adaptor because the pinout and the signals must be standard.
But, if we want to connect a display with different characteristics we need a custom cable that reroutes pins differently. In my case, I want to use a touchscreen 4 eDP line (high resolution) display. I have seen a display with this characteristics that uses 51 pin, but the most interesting ones seem to use 40 pin connector plus a different connector for touch. It seems that to connect to a display with this configuration we would need a custom cable that goes from the 40 pin in the FW motherboard and splits into 2 connectors for the display, a 40 pin no touch 4 eDP lines “standard” connector and another connector for the touchscreen pins (that could be usb or i2c, although the panels that I find interesting are always usb). All of this should be confirmed with the pinout schematics of each display from the maker, obviously.
There is some discussion on whether some displays use a third 40 pin pinout type, that includes 4 eDP lines and touch together, or even use custom pinouts, but, from looking around the web, I do not think that is the case for modern displays in general. In any case a custom cable seems to be needed, so one way or the other does not change much. It will always come down to confirming the pinout of a particular display.
There is also the issue of how to go from 3 power lines in the FW motherboard to 4 power lines in the display. The FW 40 pin cable already does this, but I have not found the schematics for the cable. My guess is that one of the power lines from the motherboard doubles or one of the power lines in the display is unconnected. Hopefully someone from Framework can clarify on this, or even better publish the schematics of the cable. It would make things easier.
Also, there is the possibility that the custom pinout of the 40pin FW motherboard connector is not so custom and it is used in other laptop motherboards, so MAYBE a cable that splits for a touchscreen display already exists. In general the displays we can get belong to an existing laptop or tablet, so MAYBE it uses the same 40 pin pinout as the FW motherboard and the cable can be procured and used too. This would be the ideal scenario, but not sure how probable.
This got longer than expected so to finish:
There are big ifs and assumptions in all of this and please anyone correct me if I got something wrong. It would go a long way also if Framework could confirm or correct our assumptions. With that said, buying or creating a cable that will allow the FW motherboard to connect to a different display seems doable.
I have messaged the vendor of this 40 pin 4 eDP lines usb touchscreen display from aliexpress (by the pictures seems to have a small second connector that I guess is the usb touch pins) and asked him if he can provide the pinout of the connectors.
I still do not have a framework computer as I want an AMD chipset. Once they are out, I plan on getting it, and hopefully by that time most of the information here is confirmed or corrected, and I have confirmed the pinout of an interesting display as well. Then I will get the display and a custom cable to test all of this.
Any suggestions and/or corrections welcomed.
If you ever find a good source for custom made cables let me know, I have some ideas myself.
I really hope Framework uses a more compatible pinout on the Framework-16
The pinout of the FW 13 display is standard, so I guess you are referring to the pinout of the FW 13 motherboard.
@Arya mentioned there is no standard pinout for motherboards:
But yes, given FrameWork ethos of reusability, they could have set up a standard 40 pin 4 eDP lines no touch connector with the usb/i2c connector for touchscreen on the side. It would have made it much easier to source cables and reuse them, which in theory FrameWork is all about. Needing custom cables seems very anti-FrameWork. The only downside is it would have taken more motherboard “realstate”, but not sure how critical that was so it is hard to say which is the best solution.
Maybe they can improve that in future versions?
This together with exposing unused pcie lines from the chipset in the motherboard would be great improvements to the FW motherboards.
Yes, I was thinking of perhaps a separate motherboard connector for the touchscreen signals. They could keep the signals also in the 40 pin motherboard connector. I imagine that might be easier if they sell a touchscreen in the future, having it on one connector motherboard-side and just using their custom cable to take care of breaking it out on the other side.