Visually impaired BIOS help please

[David_Mellor]

Could anyone please give the BIOS keystrokes to:
a. limit battery charge
b. Turn off USB power output when laptop is shut down

I have a number of examples of BIOS keystrokes in the visually impaired guide at:

Framework 16 visually impaired owners case, Mid plate and mainboard orientation guide

Introduction This text describes the location, orientation and nature of some aspects of the framework 16 laptop for the benefit of visually impaired owners. It can be used alongside the framework maintenance guides. Thank you to everyone who's comments helped me to locate various components, connectors and screws in the laptop. All measurements are in millimeters and are (x, y) coordinates measured from the left and front edges of the laptop. The term "vertical" is used to refer to front/ba…

Thank you!

[Amar_Persaud]

I do not believe there is a bios setting to disable the USB devices when powered down

I will first describe the exact keys to press for that and then describe in detail the layout of all of the settings.

1. Spam F2 to enter bios.

2. Press down arrow, then right arrow, then enter.

3. Press down arrow, then right arrow.

4. Press down arrow 8 times.

5. Press Enter, then type the battery percentage (e.g. 85) then hit enter 2 times.

Press F10 to save and exit then enter to confirm.

I will now describe the bios format (kinda long and not complete, but pretty much most of what you will need)

After spamming F2 you enter the first bios screen.

The first menu shows two rows of icons, three in the first and two in the second

The first row row icons are labelled: continue (to boot as normal), boot manager (to manage boot device order), and boot from file

The second row contains icons labelled: Administer Secure boot, and Setup utility.

To enter the bios settings, select Setup Utility by pressing down then right to highlight it then enter

Now in the bios settings there are 5 icons: main, advanced, security, boot, and exit. To enter one of these submenus, press the up and down arrow keys to select it and then the right arrow key to enter that menu. Then, up and down arrows selects a submenu item. Press left to return to selecting a submenu. Pressing Enter on a submenu item lets you change its value. I have put the options for each submenu item in parenthesis after it, in the order they are listed. Up/down arrows changes between the options. The option initially highlighted is the option currently selected. Selection does not wrap in any of these menus.

Under A) main the submenu items are Language, system time, system date, and about.

Under B) Advanced, the submenus items are 1) iGPU memory (Auto/Gaming), 2) PCIE dynamic link power management (disabled/enabled), 3) USB4 device measured boot (disabled/enabled), 4) Power button brightness (High/Medium/Low), 5) Standalone Operation (disabled/enabled), 6) Standalone detection (disabled/enabled), 7) Force Power for Input Modules (Force off/require modules/Force on), 8) Linux Audio Compatibility (Linux/Windows), 9) Battery charge limit (type integer in), and 10) battery disconnect (Left/right arrow, yes/no). To select an option after pressing enter on any of these, hit up/down arrow to select an option and enter to confirm.

Under C) security its a bit more annoying because some of the keypresses scroll the screen down instead of selecting the next option so I’ll briefly describe this one: It contains options for TPM, storage/supervisor passwords, enabling chassis intrusion detection, and manual cutoff for: External IO ports, Wifi/bluetooth device, fingerprint, and camera. As far as I can tell this just enables and disables those devices, not specifically when asleep or shut down.

Under D) Boot the submenu items are: 1) power on AC attach (disabled/enabled), Quick boot (disabled/enabled), Quiet boot (disabled/enabled), Network stack in bios (disabled/enabled), USB Booting (disabled/enabled), Timeout (integer), Automatic Failover for boot order (disabled/enabled), New Boot Device Priority (First/Last/Auto)

For example, I said that for Advanced, the 4th submenu item was Power button brightness (High/Medium/Low). To change it to Low, I would hit down arrow to select advanced, right arrow to enter it, down 3 times to select Power button brightness, then Enter to change the brightness. Since the options are in the order High, Medium, Low, I would mash down arrow to get to the bottom, then enter.

[David_Mellor]

Thank you very much for this. I’ll give it a go.

[David_Mellor]

So, it seems from the above instructions that my BIOS instructions in the visually impaired guide are wrong.
When I wrote about the battery disconnect I said 10 cursor down presses but it should actually be 9.
It still works because additional presses don’t wrap off the end.
I did have some detailed descussion about this at the time on the forums and I’m now wondering if the behaviour has changed with the last BIOS update.
I was told that the cursor starts above rather than on the first item in this “advanced” menu.

[Amar_Persaud]

This is correct, every menu except for the dropdown when choosing an option/value for one of the submenu items selects the first option.

Choosing an submenu item will initially highlight the currently selected option

I am on bios 3.03 so things may have been different on the previous bios versions

[David_Mellor]

I have found a contradiction here with some previous BIOS advice, if anyone can please assist?
The advice was:
To reset the BIOS to the default settings:

Enter BIOS

Press cursor down, cursor right, enter

This takes you into the “Setup Utility”

Move 4 down, 1 right, 3 down and press Enter twice

The Laptop should reboot into default settings

[James3]

I was wondering if there is not some better solution for visually impaired people.
I think one improvement could be to make sure the BIOS displays not only to the laptop screen, but also duplicates that output to an external display.
The the visually impaired person could plug in some gadget to the slot card DP output that would act as a screen capture device from the Display Port output.
That gadget could then do some fancy character recognition and act as a good screen reader that also works in BIOS screens.

Another option could be that the BIOS not only displays on the laptop screen, but also if someone plugged a USB-Serial cable into a card slot, it would output all the BIOS words in ASCII so a screen reader would easily and cheaply be able to read the BIOS screens and take user input.

[Amar_Persaud]

I did not realize that there were additional settings / menu items under the “Exit” menu (lettered E under the previous comment I made, after the “Boot” menu item)

The options there are: 1) Exit saving changes, 2) Save changes without exit, 3) exit discarding changes, 4) Load optimal defaults, 5) load custom defaults, 6) save custom defaults, 7) discard changes

[Amar_Persaud]

Or some kind of text to speech option for the bios that can be enabled

[David_Mellor]

@Amar_Persaud

I did not realize that there were additional settings / menu items under the “Exit” menu (lettered E under the previous comment I made, after the “Boot” menu item)

The options there are: 1) Exit saving changes, 2) Save changes without exit, 3) exit discarding changes, 4) Load optimal defaults, 5) load custom defaults, 6) save custom defaults, 7) discard changes

Thank you for this. I’ll add this new information.