I’m thinking of a modification that would involve flipping the display upside down (so the display faces outwards in the ‘closed’ position). I plan to use the original display, so that should simplify things somewhat.
Is there an extension cable that I can use in conjunction with Framework’s original cable to get the necessary slack for the mod? Otherwise, is splicing longer wires onto a Framework cable a bad idea?
(I hear that Framework’s cable has different input and output pinouts, so I can’t easily skip the Framework cable entirely)
Probably not. We don’t know for sure at this point because Framework hasn’t yet put up a FW16 github repository equivalent to the FW13 one, which lists pinouts and exact connectors used.
Maybe I’m not following?
The FW13 has pins for touchscreen i2c and usb on the mainboard side. Framework mentioned that the FW16 also has touchscreen pins on the mainboard side.
Now that I’ve actually thought about it, there really isn’t a reason to say “Probably not”. All we can say it that we don’t know yet. Hopefully they keep the same mainboard pinout and connector. Possible they changed it due to how the PCB routing worked out on the FW16.
Unfortunately, it seems that the most common high res / 4 lane eDP display pinout doesn’t include touch pins. So the display side of the cable also lacks those pins in order to support the common screens. I think some high res touchscreens use a separate connector for the touch signals, in order to stay compatible with the common 4 lane pinout.
It’s a shame they are so laptop specific - a lot of mods involving displays could be a lot sleeker/slimmer if they could take advantage of the eDP cable.
For anybody coming here looking for something similar, I bought a few of these and they have so far worked for me. I haven’t had them in a build for an extended period of time, but so far so good.