I have updated the BIOS of my framework 13 AMD 7040 many times before without problems, but this time trying to update from 3.07 to 3.09, it went wrong. The gear was stuck at one quarter on the way. The light indicating AC is connected was not lighted any more. The power button did not work. I was unable to turn off and abort the update process. Even long pressing (longer than 30 seconds) the power button did not work.
After 30 minutes a screen appeared status the “BIOS Update failed!” and the laptop finally turned off. Since then, I can turn it on, the power connect light is working as well as the fan, and the power button, but the screen remains black. The led at the right side of the laptop does emit a series of colors after a while (mostly green, some red and some blue).
Trying to reset the mainboard (as described here) did not have any effect.
Contact FW support.
It is just other users here on the community forum.
There have been very few other reports, on here, of firmware update failures, but they do happen.
Some people have been able to recover using tools that recover the flash chip, but it is probably better to contact FW support first.
Thanks for the pointer @James_Bloom ! Lot’s of good information and links there on how to recover from a bricked mainboard! My warranty period isn’t over yet, so I’ll try that first.
If you are in-warranty, support is likely to bail you out. But I do think Framework should have an easier process for flashing a known-good BIOS dump onto the board.
There’s quite a few unpopulated connector slots on retail boards that are populated on pre-production boards (although I’m unsure what they are for specifically), as well as the socketed BIOS chip.
If someone wants to dump or flash a dump, it’s doable anyway as-is, so might as well keep some debug connector installed on retail boards, and maybe even sell the flex cable/reader needed, so ordinary customers could also easily recover from a failed BIOS update.