Mainboard mystery boxes - 2x 11th gen boards - do i have hope of getting one to work? help please

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Ordered 2 boxes, got 2 identical i7-1165G7 main boards, perhaps should have done 2 separate orders to get different boards, but oh well…. Mystery boxes are mysteries after all… Looks like I struck out on both 1st board was missing rtc battery and the fan was disconnected. Put the board into my fw13 laptop with nvme and ddr4 ram. Once attached battery, red leds came on (good sign!) replaced the keyboard deck and pressed the power button, green light came on (again hopeful) waited a while, pressed it again, many lights showed up, something like green, blue blue blue red or something and no framework logo ever shows up. Replaced the rtc battery from another working main board and got the same errors. Putting to close to my ears, fan was running but I never got display :cry:

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2nd board, could not turn on, battery connected, no lights, keyboard deck connected, nothing. This one had an rtc battery but the keyboard deck detection switch was missing. Sigh

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Zero out of 2 boards working.

ok, spent a bit more time with board #1, also moved it to a cooler master mainboard case and transplanted the RTC battery from board #2… managed to get hold of the led boot sequence… i used the guide on framework-diagnostic-led-sequence.md · GitHub and below are the results… however, there are 2 unexplained RED and BLUE blinks that i have no idea whats it about - also there was never an ORANGE after the diagnostics finished…

so from the LEDs, there is no battery connected (duh as it’s on the cooler master case), there is no audio board (as i never bought an extra), there is no thermal sensor - hmmm, is this an issue? and display initialized OK BUT nothing shows on screen in the FW13 laptop case… (haven’t plugged in a usbC to hdmi yet…

Any other insights? the unexplained RED and BLUE, and no Orange is odd…

# Blink Color Description enum value in EC firmware
White Start of diagnosis DIAGNOSTICS_START
1 Red Battery connected check DIAGNOSTICS_HW_NO_BATTERY
2 Green Power Good 3V5V supply DIAGNOSTICS_HW_PGOOD_3V5V
3 Green Power Good VCCIN_AUX DIAGNOSTICS_VCCIN_AUX_VR
4 Green CPU deassert sleep S4 DIAGNOSTICS_SLP_S4
5 Green Power boot core VR DIAGNOSTICS_HW_PGOOD_VR
6 Green Touchpad detected DIAGNOSTICS_TOUCHPAD
7 Red Audio board Detected DIAGNOSTICS_AUDIO_DAUGHTERBOARD
8 Red Thermal sensor detected DIAGNOSTICS_THERMAL_SENSOR
9 Green Fan detected and spins up DIAGNOSTICS_NOFAN
10 Green CPU reached S0 state DIAGNOSTICS_NO_S0
11 Green DDR initialized OK DIAGNOSTICS_NO_DDR
12 Green Internal display initialized OK DIAGNOSTICS_NO_EDP
unexplained red ??
unexplained blue ??
there was no Orange Start of POST code section DIAGNOSTICS_HW_FINISH
Green POST code bit 0 DIAGNOSTICS_BIOS_BIT0
Green POST code bit 1 DIAGNOSTICS_BIOS_BIT1
Green POST code bit 2 DIAGNOSTICS_BIOS_BIT2
Green POST code bit 3 DIAGNOSTICS_BIOS_BIT3
Green POST code bit 4 DIAGNOSTICS_BIOS_BIT4
Green POST code bit 5 DIAGNOSTICS_BIOS_BIT5
Green POST code bit 6 DIAGNOSTICS_BIOS_BIT6
Green POST code bit 7 DIAGNOSTICS_BIOS_BIT7

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You are the second person I have seen post about a board missing the chassis intrusion switch. Interesting. I wonder if there is a reason for that?

I myself received two 12 gen boards. No video on mine either. Just those codes.

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just had the time to plug in a usb hub which has a hmdi out to the cooler master case. put in the DDR4 ram and a stick of nvme with windows on it. also had a usb c power cable with wattage readout.

When the power was connected - white power led lights up, 6-7w power draw, fan not running.

power button pressed, green leds on both sides light up, 23-40w power draw, stablized on 23 after a few secs. fan running, no video - assume memory training mode or something… so i wait

waited 5mins, no change, 2 green lights

press power again, green lights went off, one white light left. power draw steady at 21w, fan on, still no video

so far no joy…. sigh… again, if you have any ideas on what i should try next, i’m all ears….

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hey @jared_kidd - thanks for replying! i didn’t see the post with the missing chassis switch, i did a search but it didn’t turn up anything. If you happen to see the post, can you link it here? thanks.

also, bummer with both 12gen boards. did you try them in a cooler master (or 3d printed case) or did you swap a board out of a fw13 chasis? so far, having done both, i’m pretty discouraged… no video out sucks.

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If you have access to a ccd you may get more info. As for the missing chassis switch you could just bridge that if that causes any kind of problem.

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It was this one on reddit:

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thank you! very curious, mine is a 11th gen with the same thing missing… wonder why they remove it (unless of course it was faulty)

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hey @Adrian_Joachim, thanks for your reply, can you clarify what is a ccd? appreciate the help!

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It’s probably not intentionally removed but part of the damage.

It’s a thing you can plug into a specific usb-c port to directly talk to the embedded controller.

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