Many mobile phones have a special cable one can plug into the USB port on them, and they give special access to components inside the mobile phone. A common use for this is to say, installed new firmware and un-brick units.
The only difference these special cables contain is an extra resistor across two of the USB port pins. The phone detects resistor value and redirects the wires of the usb connector to a different part of the phone.
Does the Framework 16 contain any features like this?
For example, if one had flashed the BIOS and EC with faulty firmware image and the laptop was not booting. All one would need to do is plug in the special USB cable, and recover the unit.
Given how easy Framework are to open, not sure if we need this via a USB port. Mobile phones need it due to most being glued shut these days.
But a reflashing header on the FW16 mainboard would be great. At least for the FW13, there isn’t one. It has an EC debug header on the mainboard, and even via a USB port. howett.net/posts/2023-04-framework-ec-card. No reflashing through these, though. To recover a faulty flash, you need to use a flash programmer and pogo pin adapter on the chip. community.frame.work/t/how-to-prepare-for-reflashing-firmware/31001. So yeah, just a header would be a big step up.
Just curious, wouldn’t a dual BIOS option like high end desktop mainboards/GPUs be useful instead? Maybe one that comes with the original one that was shipped?
Though I have a wish that Framework has the same troubleshooting suite that Thinkpads have (from hardware to software testing built into the BIOS).
A couple thoughts. 1. Dual UEFI BIOS are expensive. 2. It is possible that InsydeH2O doesn’t support it. I’m not seeing anything on their site that suggests as much. 3. While your mileage may very on this opinion, but UEFI BIOS flashing is pretty rock solid. In 25 years of firmware updates and legit hundreds of times of flashing BIOS. (I use to do Dell, Lenovo, Acer repair work on their laptops/Desktops many years ago and would do aprox 25 a week, easily.) I never had a single one fail on me from any of those vendors… unless there was an underlying issue with the hardware to begin with. In which case dual BIOS wouldn’t help you.
So yes having a backups UEFI BIOS would be nice to have, it’s really unnecessary in day to day use. Pertaining to the OP comment about a corrupt package. I can’t speak for how Framework is doing it but other UEFI BIOS validates the package after being uploaded. These packages / files SHOULD have an integrated checksum to validate against.
That said, I am a little disappointed that none of the packages here have a SHA256 hash provided next to the download. BIOS and Drivers Downloads
Its a really simple thing to do, and provides peace of mind that the package pulled down hasn’t changed.
