That’s a nice goal for their future laptops, but my goal is that support fixes this laptop they already sold me.
Thankfully, I found this forum.
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The bar is low, you’re correct, but I bring good news! I haven’t done any standardized testing procedure, but I did take it on a road trip where it wasn’t convenient to keep it plugged in. So far, I’ve had no trouble powering on. I haven’t had to perform a mainboard reset or needed to plug in to power on since the ML1220 was replaced. It’s only been about two weeks now, but I’m feeling much more optimistic at this point.
I’d still like to know what support thinks of this solution. They basically stopped talking to me after their first troubleshooting email, when they detected I was out of warranty. @Daniel_Agorander mentioned that support told him not to replace it:
But we don’t know the full context of this instruction, just that support said it to this user. It would be great if @FrameworkSupport could give us some guidelines on replacing the ML1220 battery to clear this up. I think we’ve got a decent solution for users hoping to use their laptop like a laptop again. An official thumbs up or thumbs down with explanation would be helpful.
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Unless you’ve proven out that the ML1220 is faulty, we do not recommend replacement. As we’ve previously stated, the mainboard reset and a full trickle charge should resolve the reported issue. If anyone, after attempting the reset and a full 24 hour charge cycle, continues to run into issues where the laptop is not able to power on, as mentioned by our CEO/Founder, they are to contact Support and we will evaluate on a case-by-case basis. For those that do not want to perform the reset and are replacing the battery simply to have a battery with a full charge, you will likely run into the same issue down the road. If you are having RTC battery charging issues, more often than not, it could be a solder issue with the RTC battery cradle causing the RTC battery to not have a solid connection to the board. But again, this can only be identified by performing the reset and then allowing the existing RTC battery to trickle charge for 24 hours.
If you’ve performed all of the above, and you are still having problems with the battery, please contact Support. Also critical, if you disregard the above and purchase a new RTC battery, DO NOT use a non-rechargeable battery as the mainboard will attempt to push power through it as it is expecting a rechargeable battery.
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Thank you for the clarifications, @TheTwistgibber.
Do you still recommend reaching out to support about this, specifically for users who are out of warranty? In my experience, after one troubleshooting email, support detected I was out of warranty and only suggested to buy a new mainboard or post about this issue on the forums. That was the end of their interactivity in our emails.
The possibility of CMOS battery replacement never came up, which (fingers crossed) ended up being the solution. While I will undoubtedly, as you said, run into the same issue down the road, it’s nice to use my laptop like a laptop in the interim, and ML1220s are relatively affordable.
It’s concerning that support didn’t explore whether the ML1220 was faulty. What I want to understand is, was it because Framework doesn’t generally recommend replacing the ML1220, or because I’m out of warranty and therefore not entitled to support? This is why I think it’d be helpful to create clearer expectations for out of warranty users than “contact support, we’ll evaluate case-by-case”.
Overall, there has to be a better way to handle this. The current solution of sending users to bumble around on the forums until they find @nrp’s post (prominently displayed 40 posts deep in a months old topic occupied primarily by malcontents) can be improved upon.
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Very rarely, if at all, is the ML1220 battery faulty, but we have seen solder issues pop up on the RTC Battery Cradle. This is why we ask all customers to perform the reset and then charge for 24 hours. If they run into the issue AFTER the 24 hours of charging where the laptop won’t power on again, that means that there might be a problem with the cradle itself. While we can’t rule out a bad battery, it’s extremely rare, and while swapping the battery might temporarily mitigate the issue, it isn’t actually solving anything as the battery will continue to drain if there’s a trickle charge issue. Also, 3rd Party RTC Batteries are hit or miss as far as their performance and can cause issues. We have a very small stock of RTC coin cells at our repair center in the US, and we’re only sending those out after we’ve eliminated all other potential sources of failure. In most cases, we swap the mainboard and then evaluate the returned board for any issues (then refurbish it). For those just outside of warranty, we still recommend contacting Support and I’ll remind our staff to escalate should someone be outside of warranty. All submitted information will be reviewed at that time.
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@Twistgibber - are the expected number of discharge-recharge cycles and/or expected lifespan by time (years, presumably) for the ML1220 documented someplace? Thank you.
I’ve pinged our engineering group to see if we have that available. Thanks for your patience while I await their response.
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Mine has gone really bad. Had a few stop starts. Once I got the laptop up and running I’ve left it on charge for 18+ hours and then it still wont fire up the next day. I know its the CMOS cos the underclock/battert limit etc. keeps getting wiped out. So even nearly a days charge wont do it. I’m now going to leave it for a a full 24 hours and see what happens. If it powers on then I’ll leave it 48 hours and see if it works again.
@Jason_Dagless If you’ve followed the mainboard reset step-by-step, charged for 18 hours afterwards, and still have issues with reset/power, something else is wrong, and please contact Framework Support. If you’ve checked the RTC Battery cradle, and it seems it’s solidly connected to the mainboard, we can send out one of our service RTC batteries from our repair center. It’s absolutely critical that the reset and charge is done to diagnose and it seems like you have. There could be something else going on as well, so please contact Framework Support.
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No worries. I’ll do the 24 hour charge and then do an internal test on the battery socket and get back to Support if required.
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Yeah the fact that the battery cradle keeps popping up seems to me it’s a reasonable size batch.
If my issues are purely the CPU bug then I can work around that but if it’s a bad cradle then I want that sorted before I pass it on.
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EDITED: Ahh, you meant popping up as in being mentioned, not “popping up” off the board. Yes, let’s figure out what the root cause is.
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I shall report back. 
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Yeah, this is what happened to mine too. Mainboard resets became a routine part of my boot process if I let it power down for longer than a minute (even after letting it sit on the charger all week). Laptop used to work fine for 10 months until I left it unpowered/unused in my backpack for a month, which I assume killed the RTC battery.
My workaround was to avoid turning off the laptop and always travel with the screwdriver and a SIM eject tool handy for booting.
If you’ve performed the mainboard reset, let it charge for 24 hours, and are not consistently leaving it unused/not on a charger for weeks/months, and are seeing the reset consistently, please contact Support. Either the battery can no longer hold voltage or there’s something wrong with the RTC cradle. The Support agents have updated instructions to assist, even outside of the warranty period.
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Interesting, but unplugged for 6 days max just sounds too short. I mean, when brand new, how many days did these laptops spend in inventory and shipping to customers? Why did that time unplugged not kill the RTC?
I enjoyed 10 months of hassle-free use after my laptop’s delivery, and it sure felt like I waited a long time for it to arrive at my door.
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UPDATE: Nirav’s update on this is here with links to the datasheets: Viability of an ML 1220 rechargable battery for RTC | CMOS (11th gen) - #453
Just to provide an update, this is being tracked down in coordination with our team in Taiwan as we want to make sure we’re providing the most accurate information. I’ll update here once I have the appropriate information to share. Thanks for your continued patience.
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Today my ML1220 died (it seams to leak “dust” and settings are not saved, when switched off and it starts twice until it boots). I have not found it anywhere, can anybody tell me where to buy a replacement in germany?
Is this issue fixed with Gen 12 mainboards?
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Hi all, as @TheTwistgibber noted, we have been reading through this thread carefully and listening to everyone’s feedback. There are a couple of actions we’re going to take to improve the experience for 11th Gen users who are finding that they need to reset their mainboard every few weeks or more often. Note that for the vast majority of 11th Gen users, who are using their laptops more often than every few weeks or months or who keep their laptop plugged into power when not in use, there should be no impact or need to engage on these actions.
RTC Battery Replacements
First, if you’re finding that you’ve needed to perform the Mainboard reset procedure more than a few times on your 11th Gen system after long periods of non-use, we will provide you with a free replacement RTC battery, even if you are outside of your warranty period. We will continue to do this for as long as we are able to get supply of these cells.
We’ve uploaded the datasheets for the two cells that our manufacturing partner had been sourcing for us during 11th Gen production. The key callout is that while cycle life is reasonable during normal shallow discharges, doing a full 100% discharge of the coin cell more than 10-12 times results in serious capacity degradation. From what we have seen, this is typical of Manganese Lithium coin cells, but we are reaching out to other coin cell makers to see if anyone has parts that handle deep discharge better.
Note that because these are bare Lithium Ion cells, they require very careful shipping to comply with transportation safety regulations. We’re working with our shipping carriers in each region to set up compliant shipping paths, so it may take some time for us to turn on shipments of these coin cells for all supported shipping regions. We have a small quantity of cells in the US currently, and we’re working on sourcing more of these from our suppliers, which similarly will take time due to lead times and handling requirements. Note also that we are only able to ship these cells to our supported shipping regions. We will also be listing the coin cell on the Marketplace for folks who are interested in purchasing them outside of this replacement process.
After you receive your replacement RTC cell, please make sure to let it fully recharge by keeping your laptop plugged into power for at least 72 hours. We also recommend keeping your laptop plugged into power during long periods of non-use to avoid letting the RTC battery fully discharge. Note that even a normal 5V/900mA USB-C power adapter will sufficiently trickle charge the system and RTC cell. Finally, we also recommend keeping your system up to date with the latest firmware releases. We’ve recently released 3.17 BIOS for 11th Gen.
Rework instructions for 11th Gen Mainboards (For advanced electronics repairers only)
While the above is available to all 11th Gen customers, we have an additional item that we do not recommend except for those who have both advanced soldering equipment and advanced electronics rework experience. This is a circuit modification for 11th Gen Mainboards to charge the RTC battery circuit at all times as long as the main battery is connected, even when the system is off. With this modification, the RTC battery can actually optionally be removed. This modification will make the 11th Gen similar to 12th Gen Mainboards where the RTC circuit is powered and charged directly off of the main battery. Note that because this is an advanced and difficult rework, this is not something we will be providing additional support around or warranty replacement in the event that you damage your board in the process of performing the rework. We will only be providing the instructions for doing the rework. We are currently writing this as a Knowledge Base article and will post in this thread once it is up.
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Very interested to know what the rework will be. Great that FW is making this an option but I’m feeling like we will see mainboards with ripped pads.
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