We’re happy to share that DeepComputing’s DC-ROMA RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13 is now in stock and shipping in the Framework Marketplace. This is very much a developer-focused board to help accelerate maturing the software ecosystem around RISC-V, so we recommend waiting for future RISC-V products if you’re looking for a consumer-ready experience. We shared more detail on the Mainboard in an earlier blog post and video, but as a quick summary, this is powered by a StarFive JH7110 processor that uses the open source RISC-V ISA. The team at DeepComputing designed it to drop directly into a Framework Laptop 13 chassis or Cooler Master Mainboard Case. They have published setup guides for the hardware and for installing Ubuntu and Fedora.
To make it easier to jump into using a new partner-developed Mainboard or reusing an old one, we’re also introducing the Framework Laptop 13 Shell today. This is a complete Framework Laptop 13 chassis with everything except for the Mainboard, memory, storage, and Wi-Fi. We’re eager to continue making Framework products excellent platforms to extend on. Modularity and open source documentation is good for everyone!
We have a few other updates to share as well:
We now have massive 8TB WD_BLACK SN850X drives in stock, configurable with our DIY Edition laptops and available in the Marketplace. That means that on Framework Laptop 16 with a Dual M.2 Adapter, you can put in up to 26TB of storage!
We recently open sourced the mechanical design of the Framework Laptop 16 Graphics Module Shell, and we’re already seeing new modules in development! We’re also starting to see some really exciting Input Module designs come out of the Community, like an e-paper display module.
We’re continuing to make the entry pricing for Framework products more accessible. For the remaining quantity of 11th Gen Factory Seconds systems with German and British English keyboards, we’ve reduced pricing to a new low of €639 and £549. We also ended up with a limited quantity of Crucial-branded DDR5 modules through a purchasing mix-up, which we’re selling at a discounted price through the Framework Outlet.
We published a couple of new roles on our jobs page, and we’d love to have you or anyone you know help us deliver on this mission!
The Framework She’ll is the best part of the announcement here. It fills a need and more broadly assists owners in selling old mainboards. Good job team.
I received my RISC-V mainboard today, swapped it out and noticed that the internal display doesn’t display anything. It is backlit and I can also change the brightness using F7/F8, but otherwise it’s just black. I tried reseating the display connector but to no avail.
External displays work just fine via HDMI, but the internal display is not detected by Linux at all.
Does this board support the 2.8K display, or just the 2.2K one? I didn’t find any official information on this. Is the 6.6.20 kernel the images provided by DeepComputing maybe too old to support the display, or am I doing something else wrong?
I’m not sure if this is the right thread to start posting issues/comments about the new board, but does anybody know how to get it into suspend / sleep? Fedora thinks it supports s2idle but the option isn’t available in the Gnome power menu, and manually invoking it with systemd just throws a permission denied error (even with sudo)
I was able to install the generic Fedora image after chroot mounting the image and adding a custom 6.13.2 kernel build with the patches from the DC-linux repo.
The process was a little messy, because I had to burn the DC Roma provided image with the vendor 6.6.20 kernel to get u-boot/SPL then removed the rest of the partitions and added the ones from the image linked above.
It mostly works. But I can’t see battery status, I haven’t actually seen the camera work yet, though it is detected. Most frustrating is that there is something wrong with the color when I start X. I filed an issue for this on the DC-linux repo. (edit: I received a response that this is a known issue with this repo, and to use 6.6.20 for working video for the time being).
It also seems to boot slow when Framework/DeepComputing splash screen comes up and I can’t see anything before grub, because I guess I need a USB-C breakout cable to get serial to see u-boot, per the serial connection guide in the DC-DeepComputing/Framework repo so I found and ordered one.
I also could not find any screws to screw down my motherboard with the shell, which was also unexpected. I guess I need a $5 screw kit?
