Back in 2021, I bought two 11th Gen Frameworks - batch 4 and 5, respectively - and I noticed that the batch 5 laptop (which I gave to my wife) always had slightly stiffer hinges. Mine weren’t as loose as some who’ve complained on this forum, but it was… noticeable. A few months ago I decided to buy the 4.0 kg hinges, and today I finally replaced them.
Taking everything apart and putting it back together went smoothly. Then I pressed the power button and got nothing on my display.
I took everything apart and put it all back together again, re-checking every step. I re-seated the display cable half a dozen times. I got the idea to take apart my wife’s batch 5 laptop and test her display with my main board, and vice versa, and then I had two laptops with displays that wouldn’t turn on!
My next move was to plug them into another display via HDMI, which at least verified that everything else was working on both laptops.
Mine (Fedora) was blinking red for “Internal display initialized” when I powered it on. Oddly, my wife’s would show the Framework splash screen for a second when powered on, but then her OS login screen (Windows 10) never came up.
In the end, after trying to re-seat my display cable 10 or 20 times, I blew on the connector Nintendo cartridge style, and it started working again. I immediately took apart my wife’s laptop and did the same thing with the same positive result. I don’t know why that worked, and I know it’s not a good idea, but there it is.
So I’m good now, but that was scary, and it took up a good chunk of my morning.
I’m happy with the stiffer hinges. It does feel better to me, and I move around a lot so it’s better for my workflow. At the same time, I can now appreciate the ease of one-handed lid opening / closing per the original design.
Anyway, I just wanted to offer my story to the Framework team and anyone else who might come along and run into the same problems.