Yup. I even do the overkill and run chrony on a consumer laptop…
And don’t discount lazyness – I’d have to work to undo the fix!!! 
Rework Instructions for 11th Gen Mainboards to enable powering the RTC circuit from the main battery
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With the RTC Substitute solution, if the main battery is really dead / really low voltage / disconnected, then it’s essentially a mainboard reset. You immediately lose BIOS password, date / time, boot order, memory training…etc. (Yes, this board will not retain BIOS admin password on a mainboard reset)
But I can live with that.
With the first solution, if your main battery is really dead / really low voltage / disconnected, you would still have a 3-4 weeks ‘grace’ period before the mainboard is reset…assuming the RTC battery is in good shape.
So, it’s a matter of grace period vs ease of DIY repair.
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Once again, please keep this thread on-topic to discussing the available rework options and asking/answering questions about them. Off-topic messages have been removed.
As I don’t see my latest post, I can easily assume you have removed it. So, in short, shorted the mainboard. In other words fried it. Ah well, lesson learned.
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MJ1
Good advice. Too late, fried the sucker.
Finally installed it today. To be honest for me it was more difficult than the UltraHDMI mod I installed on my N64… The wire just didn’t want to stick. I can highly recommend magnifying glasses as well.
Everything worked well except for the PTM7950 installation. I gave up after three tries (yes, I put it in the freezer) and just installed MX4 paste.
Didn’t stick to what? Generally I’d approach it like this:
- Tin the wire with solder
- Add a small blob of flux on the capacitors on the mainboard
- Use tweezers to hold the tinned wire against the capacitors, as shown
- Tap it with a hot soldering iron until it melts together, then remove soldering iron. A second or so should be enough.
- Hold the tweezers in place until the solder cools down and gets solid.
- Use the tweezers to check if the wire is properly soldered on
- If it looks good, clean up any remaining large flux blobs with some alcohol and lint free pads/fabric/etc
If it didn’t stick to the capacitors, you probably missed at least one of the steps between 1 and 5.
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To the solder. I’m not used to stranded wire. At least that’s what I think caused my issues. I could not get a blob of solder on the wire somehow.
But I got there in the end.
To be fair, the wire Framework uses seems to be pretty terrible. I’d have replaced it with solid core enamel wire, like it is used in inductors.
I have also come around to installing my RTC substitute module today and found it pretty easy.
The most nerve wracking part was finagling the module into the RTC battery holder, as it seems to be about 0.5mm or so too thick and the holder is very fragile.
The laptop booted right afterwards and everything is fine.
I did not, however, remove the mainboard from the notebook and just did it in-place. I don’t endorse doing it this way, but for me it worked just fine.
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Yeah, I left the mainboard in place too. I fully removed the battery, but left the mainboard in place. I made a video and it’s uploading now. I will post it here when it’s done.
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Thank you for making me feel better 
I also think it is this Aluminium wire. It was so crazy flexible.
P.S. also unplugged battery and left the Mainboard in.
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I didn’t have any issues with the wire they use, but I suppose it’s not quite as easy to work with as solid magnet wire.
Here’s my video:
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Yes, you did a good job. (Of course the molten plastic wouldn’t have happened with a better wire).
For anyone who wants to try this in the future, I’d advise to grab with the tweezers closer to the end of the wire (i.e. closer to where you want to solder). You don’t have to worry about melting metal tweezers. You might even want to (carefully) rest the tweezers on the PCB or onto some component. This way you can keep it in place better, even with shaky hands.
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Yeah, keep in mind, I was trying to make sure I was leaving a view of what I was doing for the camera, so my video isn’t necessarily 1 for 1 on how you should do this or how it will necessarily go for you. Being comfortable and stable is going to make all the difference when doing work like this. If you can prop your hands and even, as mentioned, the tweezer, it can help a lot. I’m sure having the board out of the case would make that part easier as well, so you could wrest your wrists on the desk, instead of hovering them over the case.
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I installed the RTC substitute module today but the micro soldering was done perfectly by a local repair shop.
After reassembly, the laptop started and everything is fine.
I will be able to use my Framework without worrying that the battery will completely discharge.
Thanks to the whole Framework team 
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This looks pretty good. It doesn’t bog down too much into making a perfect solder with repeated reheating which risks desoldering the component and damage. If I were doing it, I’d also try to affix the wire to the board so that it touches the component in the right way without holding it. Then I could use my other hand for bringing solder straight into the joint which would make the soldering even easier.
Hi - not sure this is the right place to put this - I notice a trivial but confusing display issue now I have installed the fix. After the PC has gone to sleep and woken up the lock screen shows an empty battery - once unlocked it shows the real value. Bit of a surprise the first time - I wonder if there is a fix possible for this
(pls ignore the dust …)
Locked
Unlocked
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