Framework 11 DIY Batch 2 USBC ports fail with power plug

[Nicholas_C_DeBord]

My DIY Intel 11 Framework laptop has a couple of annoying problems. The coin battery issue everyone knows about.

The second issue is the USB C modules. After having the power unit turn off a couple of times, I moved the USB C modules around. I ended up having two on the left side of the laptop. Every now and then, the power unit fails when the USB port stops working. The solution has been to move the plug to the second port and then it will work once again. Yesterday it was plugged into the lower USB C port and it failed. Moved it to the upper USB port and it now works again. I have had to reverse this order more than a few time and not a clue why it fails or why it will work again simply by moving the power cord to the adjacent USB C port.

[Morpheus636]

What charger are you using? Is there anything else plugged into the laptop? Do you have the BIOS battery charge limit set?

[Nicholas_C_DeBord]

I use Framework’s charger. On the right side I use a usb-c port for a VAVA USB C Hub into which I have plugged in a mini-sd card, an external 500Meg SSD and an RJ45 cable. I do have the BIOS set for 82% on the battery.

[Morpheus636]

See if you can reproduce the issue with the limit set to 100%.

[Nicholas_C_DeBord]

Morpheus,

Why would that make a difference? BIOS setting was changed to, on my laptop, 82 in response to concerns raised here.

[next_to_utter_chaos]

Maybe, because a lot of seemingly unrelated observations and problems seem affected by this setting. E.g., disconnecting thunderbolt devices:

@real_or_random

Indeed. I’d still appreciate it if you could confirm the possibility that this is a hardware or a firmware problem, and forward it to whoever is responsible and can take a look. Here’s a possible explanation:

The logic in EmbeddedController/baseboard/fwk/battery.c at 72748b7d0aa4ac18204f00608ed61451b10314a3 · FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController · GitHub (this code is custom to the Framework!) sets the charging mode to CHARGE_CONTROL_IDLE when the set charge threshold is reached. If the charge current happens to be high at this point, it’s suddenly reduced to 0, and this is precisely what causes disconnects in my experiments.

Note that CHARGE_CONTROL_IDLE is even set if the max threshold is 100% (i.e., the default), but still, it seems that only users with a threshold <100% seem to suffer from disconnects. I suspect that is because the other parts of the charging logic make sure that the charge current is low when close to 100%. And when a low current is suddenly set to 0, this does not result in a disconnect according to my experiments.

All of this is speculation until tested, but it seems plausible that this is the cause. A second reason to investigate this code further is that it may be the reason for the flipping between charging and discharging .

[ElKrasso]

Same problem here. Using different charging devices: Anker, Steamdeck, …