"Text Mode" BIOS Boot, 30 Seconds of Nothing, 33ms of Text

Framework Laptop 16
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1

I’m still in the “configure the BIOS” stage of setting-up my Laptop 16; no OS has yet been installed.

In the BIOS (which I upgraded to 3.05), “Quiet Boot” is set to “Disabled”, which, if I’m reading the text correctly, should enable “booting in Text Mode.”

After saving and rebooting, the screen is dark for around 30 seconds, then, for a fraction of a second, this can be seen in the upper-left corner of the screen:

boot_text_1_30th_second
boot_text_1_30th_second312×116 11.5 KB

This blurry image was taken from a 60fps video I had to make to capture the fleeting text. There are two of these images, both the same, so this “text mode” boot only lasts 33.3 milliseconds.

How can the Framework Laptop 16 be configured to display a proper text boot (one which shows text for longer than a fraction of a second)?

–Dave

2

I’m looking at this post because I only have a Framework Desktop. Here’s the post (it shows the contents even though I only meant to link to it)

If you make these changes in the Boot menu, it will let you look at the text for 5 seconds before it continues with booting:

Quiet Boot = Disabled

Timeout = 5

PXL_20240310_163641496
PXL_20240310_1636414961920×1440 195 KB

3

Hi, sounds,

Very interesting. I changed my BIOS “Timeout” setting from “0” to “5”, and that let the “text” message display for five seconds. Thank you for that suggestion.

But, that change did not affect the 30 seconds between power-up and that message; that 30 seconds remains blank. What setting is needed for the BIOS to begin displaying boot status immediately after power-up?

–DaveSp

4

I’m having the same issue and for me it’s my external devices / docking stations I have plugged in. FW seems to enumerate all devices before booting. When I remove all USB cables, this message appears in a few seconds.

5

Hi, Marc,

With my test, I have no external devices / docking stations / etc, just expansion port modules.

I created a ticket for this and am working with the support folks to try to figure this out; when I get a solution (or at least a workaround), I’ll update this thread.

Thanks!

–DaveSp

6

After much experimentation, I discovered that the extra ~30 seconds of BIOS power-on self test (POST) only occurred when an “SD Expansion Card” was plugged in to Slot 6 (the “forward-most” slot on the right-hand side, as per “Expansion Card Slot functionality on Framework Laptop 16 (AMD Ryzen™ AI 300 Series)”).

The issue occurs whether or not an SD card is inserted into the SD Expansion Card.

When the SD Expansion Card is plugged into any other slot, there is no extra boot delay. In fact, I performed 36 boot tests, with each of my six expansion cards plugged in to each of the six slots, one at a time, and the only test resulting in the delay was when the SD Expansion Card was in Slot 6.

(To be perfectly clear on which slot is affected, on my FW 16 mainboard, the reference designator is “JUSBC3”.)

I offered to be a “test bed” for a debug BIOS, to help figure out why the extra delay was happening. Instead, the FW support folks had me replace my original mainboard, then they had me replace the SD Expansion Card, and neither replacement resolved the delay issue. (The support folks were friendly and helpful throughout.)

After those replacements, they had their engineering team try to reproduce the issue, and they were unsuccessful. I asked for confirmation that their engineering teaming had tested with the “JUSBC3” slot and not some other “slot 6”, to make sure we were testing the same slot, but so far I’ve had no reply (12 days now).

To be fair, there is an easy workaround: Don’t put the SD Expansion Card in Slot 6. But, something odd is happening in POST when that card is in slot 6 on my FW16, and I’d like to know what that is, in case that issue could affect other mainboard operations.

(If the FW16 BIOS was open-sourced for anyone to compile, I’d put in my own debug code to figure out what was going on.)

2 Likes
7

This is interesting as I had a similar issue, but with the ethernet expansion card in slot 2. Boot times were significantly increased.

I also noticed that when the boot process reached the GRUB menu, input and display were significantly delayed, so I was sometimes getting half-highlighted lines etc. Do you also see this when you have the boot delay with your SD expansion card?

8

Hi, John,

Just now, I tried a boot with my SD Expansion Card in Slot 6. I got the extra ~30 seconds boot delay, but the text on my my Grub screen (version 2.14-2) looked normal, and I didn’t notice any display or keystroke delays.

I’m using Grub in its “standard” text-based mode, and I set “GRUB_GFXMODE=1920x1200” for better readability; maybe those are different from your setup.