Only on Professional and Enterprise versions. On Home Media you don’t get that afaik. (Not tested yet, i always got a pro one)
New email
In the last email we sent, we shared that we needed to extend the development schedule and delay the first shipment timing to resolve late issues we found in the electrical design and handle delayed upstream firmware delivery. In the two weeks since then, we’ve progressed on development as planned. We have initial confidence in the electrical design changes based on early validation. On firmware readiness, we found some issues in the provided versions from our partners, but we’re working to continue to resolve them. At the moment, we’re on track to begin mass production by mid-September and ramp up to ship as many systems as we can before the end of September.
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I ordered four expansion ports: USB-C, USB-A, HDMI, and MicroSD. From the status email today, it appears that currently only the USB-C port will work in the back two slots and not result in high power draw (USB-A will but only if it is connected to a USB 3.0 device). Will this be fixed by the time Batch 1 ships, or alternatively will it be fixed in a subsequent firmware update? I would really like to have all four ports installed in my AMD Framework 13 at the same time.
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This is entirely speculative: if they’re confident that it can be resolved with an update of the cards’ firmware and/or the laptop’s UEFI, and they can’t get a fix in place before everything else is ready, I wouldn’t be surprised if they ship with this problem and then provide updates later.
So ETA for first batch would be more on October (early Q4) given the time needed for delivery from Taiwan.
Its gonna be hard to wait.
September’s gonna be the longest month of the year I guess…
lol
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I think Framework does fast shipping from Taiwan so I’d expect end of September delivery to still be possible.
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In this context “back” refers to the ports closer the the hinges/monitor or closer to the user while facing the open laptop?
We’re not aware of any theoretical fix for this in firmware. We are investigating some hardware solutions for it, including a productizable version of essentially what this community member did: Passifying the USB-A Card
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Back is the side closer to the hinges. Front is the side closer to the user.
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I thought this was fixed in this BIOS update? Or was that another problem.
Hey - I am surprised that got mentioned here but sad to hear that the issue is non-fixable. That probably means the signal from the card must go to something that is not switchable by firmware without compromising sleep. AKA its a hardware bug on the main board - ouch.
Meanwhile the mod has been working for me for a couple of months now without issue.
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Very glad to see the amount of updates now, great stuff
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@nrp So just to be sure—that mod (productized or not) will not work to connect things like Yubikeys and some flash drives that only have a USB port’s four contact pads but not the outer shield? That… is not the end of the world, I guess, but I hope this is not going to become the only option, seeing as I use an old Yubikey NEO and am thinking of also ordering a Feitian in a similar form factor.
This was on Intel platforms which use Intel retimers. Note that we have gotten feedback from the community on there still being scenarios on 11th and 12th Gen that result in higher power consumption with USB-A, but we have confirmed that the solution on 13th Gen works as expected. We have additional investigation to do on 11th and 12th Gen.
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Not a hardware bug, but actually inherent behavior on the Kandou retimers we use on the AMD platform. As far as we are aware, there are no USB4 retimer options currently available for AMD platforms that would resolve this issue, and any hardware fixes would instead be working around it from the Expansion Card end.
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It’s too early to say since we don’t have a prototype, but our design goals would be to come up with solution that works with all USB-A devices. I agree that a scenario where shell-less devices don’t go into a lower power state would probably still be a reasonable compromise.
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I just wanted to say thank you to the framework team - the communication of the last few weeks is exactly what I personally wished for. e-mails to customers with information and a more in-depth discussion in the community forums.
Maybe (!) a little earlier would have been nice. Even if that would have meant less details early on.
But this is still near perfect communication imo!
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Is there any statement from Kandou about their product’s issues?
(and where did my previous post go?)
I think someone didn’t like that you used the word buggy. 
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