TL;DR: Make sure your Touchpad Cable is inserted this far on the Touchpad side before you place the Input Cover back on after going inside your Framework Laptop:
We’ve seen a couple of reports of folks who have had Touchpad Cables short out on early Framework Laptops (Batch 1 and part of Batch 2), which is most likely caused by it being slightly pulled out or out of alignment on the Touchpad end. We’re making a design change to prevent this from happening (actually, we had made the change early in development, but somehow the final layout had a regression). In the meantime though, we ask that you be extra careful when handling the Touchpad Cable:
Only disconnect and connect the end that goes into the Mainboard.
Avoid putting too much strain on the Touchpad Cable.
Before closing your system back up after an upgrade or repair, double check that the Touchpad Cable is inserted up to the point that the white line is almost touching the receptacle. You can check step 8 in the Input Cover Replacement Guide for detail on this: Input Cover Replacement Guide - Framework Guides
Permanently fixing this issue
You can follow the guide here to apply a piece of tape to permanently prevent the Touchpad Cable from getting misaligned.
Stuff like this: Quick notifications of issues along with the solution and a fix already being implemented is what makes me like this company even more. Tons of companies sweep things under the rug until a class action lawsuit and if they do admit something is flawed even if it’s an easy fix like this then you have to go through the hastle of sending it in instead of them telling you what’s wrong.
Batch 2 systems will have a workaround where there is a tape applied to prevent the cable from coming loose, and Batch 3 should have the root cause of the issue resolved.
Yes, absolutely. We’re actually working through a guide on this, but here’s an example of placing a square of 3M 9495LE double-sided tape to ensure the cable stays in:
Since this is just an input cover issue, is it possible that batch one folks can just buy an updated version of the input cover in the future so that they don’t have to deal with all of the hassle?
Looks as though my cable is fully seated, the line is nearly touching the receptacle, however clicking down does not do anything. I can tap to click, but depressing the trackpad doesn’t actually click. Is this a result of the trackpad being shorted or something else? Also, if the trackpad were to be able to be swapped out with one that had left and right buttons that could be clicked one day I would be very interested in that.
If it’s working fine and fully inserted, you can definitely leave it. Just make sure to check that the cable is fully inserted if you go inside the system in the future before closing it back up to power on.
Ok. I’m a bit of a noob when it comes to assembling parts in a laptop. I’ve never built my own computer or really taken much interest in the past to look at the insides of a computer. But I was able to follow the instructions in the DIY Quick Start Guide and install the storage, ram and wifi card. It was pretty straightforward, and the instructions were really easy to follow. Props to the Framework team for that.
In my case, I got the orange notice about the Touchpad cable. But no double sided tape in the envelope. I didn’t attempt to remove the touchpad cable on the motherboard side. But on the touchpad side, the white line looks to my eyes like it was close to the receptacle. Should I buy the tape mentioned in the Touchpad Cable Fix Guide and stick it in anyway ? Here’s what the touchpad side of the cable looks like at that receptacle.
Couple of hours later - I booted the laptop with a Manjaro Linux XFCE distro. The touchpad seems to be working fine. Wifi isn’t being detected. I’ll probably have to open it up and see what’s up with that. Still wondering if I need the tape though, since I saw another post suggesting that it may not be needed if the touchpad works.
The cable looks installed correctly. If you don’t open and close the laptop often, or you check the cable hasn’t pulled loose from the touchpad each time you do, then adding the tape isn’t really necessary.
I opened mine up probably 20-30 times before installing the tape and it never came loose, though I was disconnecting it from the motherboard side and not the touchpad side.
A company admitting fault and offering a guide on how to fix it instead of blaming the user and sweeping it under the rug is very refreshing. Keep it up, Framework!
The whole issue regarding the touchpad cable and the documentation about it is extremely confusing to me. I put the hardware together with no problems but I saw the step about checking the cable connections and got worried that I missed something. I could not determine if the touchpad was working or not. Opened the case, looked at the connector, pushed it in but it didn’t move. Reassembled and it works fine. Did I “fix” it or was it not broken? Do I need to tape it?
