The RTC battery, once charged should last for two or three weeks. If it isn’t charged then sure power will have to be supplied externally.
If the voltage gets very low then plugging won’t do much if anything and then the RTC battery can be removed to let it recover enought to get the BIOS to come alive.
So this will only occur is some circumstances, it is not a thing that everyone will have to do. Given I use mine daily then I’m hopeing it will never happen.
Back to your residence comparison, if you don’t use a house for a few weeks regularly or only for a day or two every few weeks it won’t be that surprising to find someone may have squatted it, or even sold it.
Think someone in this thread mentioned a car analogy (non-EV).
The CMOS battery is like the car’s 12v battery. Imagine that you have to jumpstart your car everytime you want to drive it? This was particular the case for old cars (old car batteries) during covid time because of the work-from-home, shop once a week, go out less, only travel within your community / short distance.
If the ML1220 connector was implemented not as a clip, but as a two-pin connector…we could have just opt for a wider button battery…something like an ML2020 (same thickness as the ML1220). It has 45mAh capacity instead of 17mAh (nominal).
But of course, this isn’t a fix for why it’s draining so, seemingly, quickly.
Looking at the specs for ML1220 (from Panasonic):
It has a continuous drain of 0.03 mA. From a 100% health, and 100% charged…that means the battery should last around 23 days. Assuming the Framework laptop doesn’t drain the battery faster than that.
So, assuming that drain rate of 0.03mA…the ML2020 could last 62 days.
And, if the clip mechanism wasn’t there, there’s likely enough height to fit an ML2032…which could last for 90 days.
Agree. Hope Framework will have a solution for this…or at least one that can minimize the occurrence of this. In the meantime, I’m going to wait for the next gen board reviews.
Reading your post, I believe I had a similar issue, I just posted about it also. But one thing I did do is remove the CMOS battery for about 10 seconds (inspecting the battery) and put it back in and reconnected to power adapter and it started working again. I did not have the battery charge light not come on in my situation but after doing this my Framework laptop booted.
Seems to be a lot of incidences of this issue suddenly popping up recently, as if it affected a particular batch or the general charge on the RTC battery has finally drained for those of us who don’t keep the laptop plugged in most of the time (it is meant to be a portable device after all).
While I appreciate the transparency and communication from Framework in this thread it sounds like the situation is essentially unfixable and is almost destined to occur for 12th Gen Intel boards as well since they’ve insisted on using the same rechargable battery type. I’m afraid I really don’t see sense in this decision (think of the waste caused by those having to reset the mainboard and then accidentally breaking the clip, as opposed to just recycling a coin battery every… decade or so?), unless there is indeed a particular hardware problem with those of us suffering this issue.
This may not be the main issue.
A common non-rechargeable CR 2032 has only 13 times more capacity than the rechargeable ML1220 and given everyhting else was similar to my old Dell the current battery would last some 3 months not 3 weeks.
So there is a drain on the battery which is a problem and may not be fixable. But it would be nice to know exactly what it is in this lightweight laptop that deleptes the battery maybe 4, 5, 6 times quicker than anything I’ve experienced.
The issue is compounded by not just the clock being out of date, as is the case with my 30 year old Dell but that for, yet again, an unknow reason the computer will not even poer up when plugged in when the RTC reaches a specific low level.
This later part may be mitigated in the gen 12 such that it is not required to remove the RTC to get some recovery.
You would have thought that the RTC battery will only be used when the main battery is completely and utterly dead (e.g. below 11.1V, for a 3 cell)
I’m not against rechargeables but I think if your laptop battery have charge at the end of the three week gap, then uh-uhh. Something needs to be done.
If the battery is dead by the time you try to turn it back on, then understandable, but still bad. so a meh.
I’m not sure about the type of batteries used in my system. I know that my current two laptops dont have a RTC (and is kept by the internal battery). Which I am not against.
The big hope for me is that Framework take this seriously and hopefully there is either a BIOS fix or maybe a different battery could be recommended. If the dormant time could be pushed to say three weeks, I think this could solve the issue for a lot of people. Three to five days is totally unacceptable for such a device.
Having a laptop you can’t really rely on to just work, like all the previous laptops you had, is a bit of a confidence dent. Especially as it cost me £1200.00! Had it been a £300 Chromebook, I’d put it on Ebay for ‘spares and repair’ and move on.
I’m hoping Framework can keep us updated on any investigations and possible fixes. I have faith in them currently. I can’t imagine this is an impossible fix.
Otherwise expect the following types of headlines -
“Framework Laptop - The “repairable laptop” that turned out to be not quite so repairable!”
I don’t think it is going to be a massive problem since, well, after all the battery is replaceable.
This. Sums up everything very well.
Honestly I don’t … I think the issue is that the current RTC seem to be draining whenever it is off, even when the primary battery is attached, which is extremely stupid.
This will not be so stupid if the system can power on without the rtc battery, but I don’t think it work like that.
There is the inheritent issue of a recharbeable RTC battery losing charge very quickly as it need to be topped off all the time, which as we know puts pressure on the battery.
HP’s answer to this is very simple: Just don’t use one. The BIOS clock and setting will die once the primary battery is removed. Which I think is fine. The reason it exist, I think, is because the board is (at least, designed) to be able to operated without a primary battery, and thus swapping out RTC batteries is not going to be a very viable option. In reality the bios is somewhat buggy and it will refuse to turn on when the battery is absent(might be fixed)
Which is not the point. The point is in having a RTC battery that will either hold charge for a reasonably long enough time so the computer can still turn on after losing power, and second is to not have things freak out if the primary battery is present.
Which is also why I am suggesting a power pin on the framework laptop – if you design a system to supply constant power to the board (without needing the fussy USB-C power handshake, among other things), then you can eliminate the need to have a rechargeable battery because desktop fixtures are usually always powered (just like you can with a battery). Thus the RTC battery can be designed to be non-rechargeable because it will only kick in in a emergency.
In the case of a laptop the primary battery will be supplying all the power to the system (until the battery is removed or fully discharged).
If I cannot design a system to meet the requirement (of not using RTC if a battery is present) then at least I will make the RTC battery unnecessarily large (e.g. a 500mA LiPo) so it will have plenty of juice, even when I undercharge it to 3.95V to extend its life span. Or simply not have one. Although in the latter case, as I said, the USB handshake can be annoying.
Perhaps new boards have a “laptop only use” board and a “multifunction board” that has the RTC so it can be used in laptop or “enthusiast mode”.
I really don’t envisage using my board in anything but the laptop. I don’t mind having to reset the BIOS if I unplug the battery for some reason, maybe once every 2-3 years.
In the meantime it may require those of us affected to send their boards back for a few wires to be soldered on to route around the RTC. Who knows?
Was it desigend not to power on without a ‘fully’ charged RTC?
Was this an oversight and there had been no indictation that this would happen
If it was intentional exaclty how was this implimeted and why?
If not was was done such that the computer cannot be powered on without a charged RTC
And in the perverse scenario the computer was designed to fail when the RTC was low, why couldn’t it have been possible to charge it from the main battery.
Given the stated drain is 30µA/h with 18mA/h available it equates to 56mW (18mA x 3V) being taken from the main battery over one, two or three weeks.
So the generic design use is the battery should last 1800/30 or 600 hours or 26 days hence the 2 to 3 weeks.
So the battery may be OK if it lasts that long
But no warning is thoughtless
Not being able to run the computer without it is idiotic
No official way to aleviate the issue is a sure sign of the inabilty to apply reasonable intelligence
My mind is still trying to justify the stupidity on the current setup ???
We are talking about have the main battery suppling 0.09mW per hour to remove the need to have an RTC battery in it’s current configuartion or given the main battery is over 15V that’s 0.015A/h
