Hey everyone! I’m trying to bring up a Framework 13 AMD 7640U mainboard I got in a mystery box and I’m stuck. Hoping someone here has seen this before or can point me in the right direction.
My setup:
Framework 13 AMD 7640U mainboard (standalone, not in a chassis)
Framework battery
CMOS battery installed
1x 12GB RAM DDR5
No SSD installed
Framework keyboard connected
Portable monitor via USB-C to HMDI Adapter (seperate power)
100W USB-C charger (top Left)
What it’s doing:
With battery connected: continuous red blink, won’t POST
Without battery: alternating red and blue blink
What I’ve tried:
Left it charging overnight with just the charger and battery — no change in behavior
Tried a 100W charger (previously had 65W)
Tried booting without the battery on wall power only
Tried different USB-C ports for charging
Removed CMOS battery and held power button for 30-60 seconds to fully drain, then reconnected everything
I’m facing the exact same problem on my 7840U board without battery (I don’t have a CMOS battery for now). Glad to see I am not alone. Hopefully we just missed something obvious.
Personally I also tried keeping the little piece of plastic sticking out of the SW3 in the top center down, to no avail. I understand the flashing red light means that this switch is not pressed, though, so maybe for your battery case it would resolve it. But of course without battery the problem persists.
I tried with 32GB DDR5 Crucial RAM sticks that work on my board when inside the laptop case. I tried with a single stick in slot 0, a single stick in slot 1, and two sticks, no effect.
Put it back in your 16 chassis, boot into the bios and set it to standalone mode. Then it should work.
If yours is also from a mystery box. Well, let’s just say there is a reason it was in there instead of being sold as refurbished. It will make a nice wall art though.
A mystery box has some problems that can’t be used normally, let alone in standalone mode. If it looks ok, you may want to go to a board-level repair shop to find out and possibly fix that, otherwise it’s better to salvage the components from that board.
Ah that was the trick! I assumed you meant Framework 13 and carried on by plugging a battery in. By keeping the SW3 switch lowered, I was able to get it to boot. Then, in the bios, I turned on the standalone operation setting. And now it works even without battery! Thank you for the help!
@seadub I think your problem with the battery is from not pressing the SW3 switch. From there you should be able to turn on the bios setting and have it work! Let us know!
I appreciate the help. I actually don’t have a chassis. I’ve bought a used battery and used FW keyboard to try and revive the mystery box. It looks in great condition and the board lights up, just having trouble since it’s standalone.
I have power on the top left port, but my USB-C connection to my monitor (on the top right) also provides some power and at early boot stage I’m not sure which one it uses.
65W
No
USB-C
Top right
Slot 1
One stick of 32GB 5600MHz Crucial memory.
I kept the little plastic thing sticking out pressed for the entire duration of the process until I turned on the standalone mode BIOS setting.
When you keep the SW3 switch pressed it still blinks red with the battery?
So I set up my board very similarly to yours. When I remove the main battery, no S3 pressed, I get the red and blue light flashing. I understand that as a memory test. If I press S3, I get the same red and blue light flashing.
When I plug the battery in & have S3 not pressed, it continuously flashes red only. Similar to the red/blue but now just one color.
When I plug the battery in & have S3 pressed, the right light turns off, the left light turns almost white.
The red blue flashing is not a memory test, it’s the board complaining that no battery is plugged in, yet it was not configured to run in standalone mode (probably as a fail safe for the laptop use case).
When the light turns white on one side it means that you are successful! Normally it turns white on the side where your power cable is to specify where it is drawing power, I believe. That’s when the memory training starts. If you wait long enough and it fails, the LEDs will start to blink colors for an error code. And if it succeeds, you should land on the BIOS. Try waiting in the config where it’s white. If it fails, try switching RAM slot. In any case, if you see an error code, record it so you can compare it to the error code table.
Oh and I did not mention but when it’s white, press the SW1 power switch to turn the board on!
Thanks for all the help, appreciate the time. I’m stuck with the white light on the right side. My current working theories with no background in motherboard troubleshooting are:
Board has an issue with display out, none of the four USBC ports will display out
Given the caps lock key on the FW Keyboard isn’t turning on, it’s stuck for some reason and won’t get to POST.
I think my next bet is to try and find someone with a FW computer and ask for a massive favor of trying to get my board to boot in their chassis. Rather not spend $400 on a chassis right now.
