[RESOLVED] - AMD 7840 board no boot, intermittent post LED, no BIOS access, damaged in shipping

Framework Laptop 13
1

Hi guys,

Normally I wouldn’t even bother posting here since I already have a ticket in, but it has been 39 hours now with no response.

It seems like my batch 1 amd board was damaged in shipping, I have been very intermittently able to get it to show me the BIOS screen, 3 times since I have received it, and intermittently showing the LED post codes - which I have noted and recorded, 13 green (or possibly 1 white, 12 green) 14th red, 1 Blue, 2 possibly green or blue, followed by an additional 4 blue.

Most of the time starting the machine results in the screen turning on, and then nothing further, no LEDs, no display text, nothing.

Of special note is the fact that when I first got the board, and actually still, you can see the exhaust fins are bent out of shape and I had to remove and reinstall the entire cooler assembly to even get the fan to operate at all.

Couple this with the fact that it smells vaguely of burning plastic when started and I think I have a damaged board, but I’ve been unable to find any indication of what the post code I have managed to see is since as far as I can tell there are no guides for the AMD boards yet.

Really hoping support gets to me soon since I am lost a lot of time already on projects that need doing. But I am open to other ideas, as I am out of them. :man_shrugging:

Update

So I did some last resort testing to see what I could find out, I completely removed the board from the laptop and observed it directly, hooked only to another monitor, a power supply, and a keyboard.

I booted the board and it - after some time, managed to bring up the option for standalone mode, from there managed to get into the bios and everything from there was in the clear.

Long story short - I have since ordered a replacement screen.
The scent has dissipated as well - I assume it was something left during manufacture.

Thank you for all the ideas and stuff guys. It all informed my decisions.

2

Assuming the post codes are the same (which they probably are, you probably have 12 green then an orange, (the 13th one is always orange) and then you should have 8 green or blue ones, but from your description it isn’t clear if you have BGGGBBBB or BBGGBBBB or BGGBBBBB, but you probably have miscounted something. These post codes don’t indicate an error, especially the first 12 codes say that the CPU, RAM and so on all initialized ok. However you might want to check your counting to give support the right code.

You might of course have something burning on the board or display damage or whatever (the display doesn’t seem to have a LED code), but support should help you there.

3

Yeah - watching the video I recorded, its 1 white, 12 green. 1 orange, then 1 blue, 2 green, 5 blue.

The display works fine with the 11th gen I am upgrading from, so I can’t see that being the issue, but I will plug in an exterior monitor and remove the display cable to see.

4

No changes, no display comes up even with the internal display removed and hooked up to an external.

On power, not on power, with expansion cards, or no, single stick of ram, alternated single sticks, with nvme or not. :confused: :frowning_face:

So for diagnostic bits I’ve got 10011111, hex 0x9F - which doesn’t appear in the port 80 codes list :expressionless:

5

I’m not sure how Framework counts these codes, it might be lowest bits first, which would equate to 11111001 / 0xF9.

6

True, which would be no boot device as per - which is entirely valid. As I have no boot device.
But it should still show the uefi or something - anything. I am going to try one more display with DP instead of HDMI, perhaps that will show something.

Grasping at straws here but :man_shrugging: thanks for the ides. I really would rather not want to have another board shipped out.

7

Which memory did you get? Here [RESPONDED] AMD Batch 1 Guild - #941 by Kevin_Pham are some discussions that the 64 GB kits from crucial might cause such problems for whatever reason.

8

These are both signs to me that you should avoid powering on the computer for now. When you sent support a message did you get an automated response back that you were in queue? There is a chance that Support is a little slowed down now that everyone is starting to receive AMD boards, so I would wait until next week to see if you get a response, and if not hopefully someone sees this post. (if you didn’t get an automated email when you first put in your request, you should probably try putting in a second one to see if there was some issue with their system)

9

Note that it’s not clear if that list is current. It’s from Sep 27, 2021

10

Hi there,

Sorry to hear of your troubles, I can sympathise. Do you think you could share images or a description of how the board was packaged? I would like to know if the packaging has changed from the single skin cardboard box a little larger than the board with paper packing material?

If you do not hear back from support soon maybe @ the Twistgibber

11

I’ve edited the main comment with additional details. Thanks guys.