Rework Instructions for 11th Gen Mainboards to enable powering the RTC circuit from the main battery

Community Support
155

Completely agree. I think we’ve endured enough with this problem. Making us jump through extra hoops just to get a fix that everyone with a 11th gen board needs eventually is a bit of a stretch…
Please reconsider your workflow here. Request through support yes, but troubleshooting steps back and forth no…

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156

Have they said they will require troubleshooting steps back and forth in order to receive this module? I know at other times they were suggesting troubleshooting steps while they worked on a solution, but hopefully they won’t require a lot of messing around for those who want this module in order to perform this modification. It didn’t sound to me like they will, but we’ll see I suppose.

1 Like
157

FWIW, I submitted a ticket and got boilerplate answer to ask for a new coin battery to be sent out. So, the short answer as far as I know, is Support has not yet set up a system for the fake battery solution for I5 users.

158

Re-read what Nrp last said.

He did not say it’s available right now, and he did not direct anyone to contact support to try to get one. Support is handling very high loads right now. Status of Framework Support (July 31st, 2023)

Framework will let us know when the fulfillment warehouses are stocked, and how to request one when it’s time to.

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159

Folks, please read Nirav’s message. This new single-solder point alternative is NOT ready yet and our Support team is unable to provide either the alternative, or timing, as there’s still work to be done to make it available. Our team will continue to offer a new RTC after troubleshooting determines that the original has been deep-cycled too many times.

@MJ1 is 100% correct. We’ll let the Community know when it’s ready and the part is available in our Service centers. Thank you for your continued patience.

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160

Yes, they have. NRP said (emphasis mine):

This means you need to meet an even higher requirement to get the board. There are two separate issues that manifest differently:

  1. Your button battery could fail and then your laptop won’t boot if its been off a charger for 10 minutes. This doesn’t require a mainboard reset to fix, all you need is a replacement button battery.
  2. You could hit the small percent chance that the low voltage on the RTC line causes the machine to become unbootable until you reset the mainboard. This state is different from #1 because plugging in a charger won’t make your laptop boot if you hit this state.

NRP’s post says you have to be in camp #2. Perhaps he misspoke, idk, but I doubt they’re going to be more loose with handing out custom small-volume circuit boards than they are mass-produced standardized dirt cheap batteries, so at a minimum you can expect the same hurdles those of us in camp #1 have had to jump through, which include:

  1. Tell them when the issue started
  2. Estimate how long your laptop was left unplugged before the issue started
  3. Tell them which charger(s) you are using including make, model, and power output
  4. Check that you are on the latest firmware and take a photo to prove that you are
  5. Perform the full mainboard reset anyway (even though you don’t need it if you’re in camp #1)
  6. While your button battery is removed, take a clear photo of the button battery holder
  7. While your main battery is disconnected, take a clear photo of the allegedly super fragile main battery connector to see if you damaged it.
  8. Take a photo of your mainboard with “the sticker/shroud removed”
  9. Put everything back together
  10. Charge for 24 hours

That is unless Framework finally realizes that every interaction we have with their customer support is rapidly draining the enthusiasm we had for this once-loved product.

(PS, the whole process took 12 days, 3.93 of which was time waiting for framework to respond on email and 4.68 of which was shipping time. The rest of the time was time waiting on me.)

4 Likes
161

At this point, you may just want to download the files from GitHub and go to PCBWay or something and get it made yourself. Will probably be faster than waiting for and going through support to obtain one.

162

You guys sure encourage Framework to be public about developing and testing things like this in the future.

And I’m sure if they had rushed it out and there were problems that they didn’t get to work out, you’d give them hell for rushing.

These things take time. I suspect everyone will live.

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163

Is there a possibility to have this workaround and a coin cell? I am afraid if the battery is empty, the BIOS settings will reset.

164

No not possible – the workaround takes the place of the coin cell.
But don’t worry, the battery is just for the real time clock, not bios – and the workaround provides power from the main battery instead of the coin cell.

The worst case is that you’ll lose the time if your main battery completely depletes – but the machine will restart when you plug-in / recharge the main battery and your OS will reset the time once you’re online.

165

I’m just going to buy another board later this year. Will be quicker and easier most likely.

I’ll sell the 11th gen on somewhere.

166

MJ1,

I was replying generally to the other posters who wondered when Support was going to be up and running on this. So I checked. Not yet was the response and that is what I posted, nothing more.

167

Jason,

I thought about that, but am unwilling to foist this unreliable laptop on an unsuspecting buyer.

168

Jason, is this the board you are looking at?
Intel® Core™ i7-1165G7
Selling for 400 bucks and I would assume it is a drop in replacement, not sure of course.

169

Yeah I have the 1165G7 currently. Would get a 12th or 13th gen equivalent later this year.

Someone will be more than happy to buy the old board for a project I’m sure.

170

If you have an 11th Gen system or Mainboard, you can now reach out to support to request a free RTC Battery Substitute module. To make the request process go smoothly, enter the email address that you ordered the 11th Gen product on and/or include photos of the system and Mainboard serial numbers.

Note that there are no constraints making this request other than being an 11th Gen system or Mainboard owner (whether or not you are in warranty). We ask that you really make sure you are comfortable with performing soldering on expensive electronics items before performing the installation, as we won’t be able to provide advice or support around soldering or provide fixes for failed soldering attempts. We also ask that you only make the request if you’ve faced needing to perform a Mainboard reset, as we want to avoid waste.

14 Likes
171

Thank you @nrp - I really appreciate that a solution has been found - I look forward to a bit of soldering. For those of us who have a station what temp do you advise for the soldering - I did not see that in the rework instructions.

1 Like
172

Great news! Thanks for considering the worries that people had about jumping thru hoops – it feels like your asks are totally fair.

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173

To add to this, you will receive an automated reply with a lot of great troubleshooting information. You may or may not have received this previously, but this is the gateway message into the specific queue dedicated to triaging these requests. Please understand that the message is sent to everyone entering this queue (which is noted at the top of this automated message in italics and bold). Once in the queue, we will be triaging these requests separately from our normal queues and will work with our repair center partners to fulfill requests. We ask for your patience while we continue to streamline this process over time. Responses may be delayed, and we will be queueing up requests and communicating in batches to our partner. Fulfillment will begin next week.

Also, while we understand this has been a frustrating experience for some of you, we kindly ask that you enter the queue with a collaborative mindset as our agents are just trying to assist in fulfilling requests. Aggressive/abusive messages will be ignored.

Thank you for your patience while our entire team worked diligently to deliver these new options.

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174

I have entered a request for the modules for my two machines. For full transparency, I have not needed to reset the mainboard on either machine, but I have run into the need to attach to power before the laptop will boot. To work around that, I keep both machines on power most of the time, with a charging limit. I would like to perform the work on the machines to avoid running into the issue in the future. I would be hesitant to hand off either machine in the current state to someone who does not possess solid technical skills - the RTC holder for example, is extremely fragile, and removing the battery from it is necessary to reset the board. I’m not a superstar technically, but I am ok, and fiddling with the RTC battery gives me pause whenever I have to do it (which thankfully has only been a couple of times).

I’m comfortable doing the work, having done the HDMI card rework on one of my cards. I also am ok being later in the queue than those who have run into the issue. I do feel that doing this work is necessary for me to get the boards to a state where the machines can be handed to anyone to use.

I am thankful that you have provided the means to rework the boards.

Finally, to anyone who made it this far, congratulations, and have a great day.

1 Like