Water Damage - repair shop recommendation?

Community Support Question
#1

Hi - I recently accidentally got my framework laptop a little bit wet (looks like a spot on the motherboard underside).

I dried it out, used 99% isopropyl to clean up the contaminants, but it seems to be dead. I’ve reached out to support to start ordering the pieces I would need to troubleshoot it, but wanted to see if anyone was aware of a repair shop that could do this for me (preferences in order, nyc, bay area, Seattle). I’m guessing I either killed my main board, the top input cover (I may have grabbed it with a wet hand), or the battery.

Otherwise I’ll play whackamole to figure out what is dead with spare parts (and then probably assemble a second laptop out of what remains).

For those who have hardware debugging advice, I’ve tried trickle charging it with a non pd usb c cable, and no lights come on, not even power or charging light.

Main board damage photos (pre cleaning)

PXL_20220409_190633452
PXL_20220409_1906334521920×2560 551 KB

#2

Northridge fix, also add when you send it into them make sure to say that you can get schematics!

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#3

I’m sorry this happened. Since you prefer NYC, maybe give Louis Rossman a try? I know they officially work on Macbooks, but it won’t hurt asking if he can make an exception on this one (and make a video on it, too?).

Around what area of the laptop got spilled on?

What happens when you use the official charger or a compatible equivalent? If there are completely no signs of life, the board’s dead cold and the fault is likely very early on in the power sequence.

Possibilities could be:

  1. At the level of the fuse. If this is the case, there is hope. If you have a multimeter, at least this is something you can do continuity testing on.
  2. At the level of the USB controller. What happens if you charge via different ports? Each port has a separate controller. If none of them work, then not even the USB controllers are getting power and not even the Always On rails are present.
  3. Less likely: at the level of the Super I/O. But even a faulty Super I/O should still have Always On rails, which your case does not have.
  4. Less likely: at the level of the main BIOS chip. But then again, Always On rails should still be present.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any schematics so I don’t know the power architecture the Framework laptop has. Verifying the voltage rails would help. But these are my hypotheses with the information given.

I hope these help! I hope you can find the repair you need soon.

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#4

I would also try Louis Rossman. He made a video on the Framework laptop before. Also they are very fast, responding to E-Mails, so maybe try that first. Depending on how far you live from the store, you could also go there and ask in person. I guess saying no to someone in person is harder than via mail

#5

Hilariously enough - I’m used to laptop manufacturers that suck - I poked framework
Support and they said I should just send it back to them, they’ll figure out what components are broken + swap them (which is awesome :slight_smile: ).

3 Likes
#6

Well thats amazing for you.

I was hoping for a Louis Rossmann video about it, though.
Keep us postet, on what the costs are please

#7

Update

Got framework to repair my laptop - they just swapped all the broken components - butcher bill was 600$ on a 750$ laptop (400 for mainboard, 100 for input cover, 100 for labor). I could have saved 100$ by just ordering the replacement bits myself but eh.

I’d happily send my family to framework for repairs, latency was fine, customer support was fine. I was dissapointed they didn’t have repair capabilities for the mainboard which is the most expensive bit.

Apparently the default policy isn’t to send back the swapped out components, and they didn’t send them back initially, but I did ask for it, and when I poked them they sent them back in a second package.

@devryd
I did poke Rossman repair group, and dropped off my framework at their shop. I assume I was chatting with Louis when they said they were very excited to try and see how hard these boards were to repair but the shop had no idea but did take it. It sounds like he is certainly going to try fixing the dead board :slight_smile: Hopefully we’ll get a video or something entertaining out of it.

4 Likes
#8

Oof, that water damage looks nasty. I once had a thinkpad that had less corrosion on it after water damage but it was dead as a dodo even after ultrasonic cleaning attempts. I was lucky to grab one of only two mainboards in all of europe from ebay, and I was even more lucky the ram and ssd and such survived.

I would love to see that video :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#9

I am fairly confident, that louis will be able to save that, assuming, that the available schematics will be detailed enough.

#10

Ask, and you shall receive:

Sadly, they don’t have enough of the schematic yet to complete the repair at a reasonable price. I still support Framework for what they’ve done so far, but I hope we get more in the future.

Was that your machine?

1 Like
Brainstorm arguments that framework laptop will be successful in the market
#11

Lets hope, that they release the rest of the schematics soon.
Every fixed Board, is a Board that doesnt have to be recycled.

#12

In the video they tried to use publicly available subset of the schematics which is definitely not enough for the task.

I believe there was a miscommunication somewhere, since repair shops are now able to obtain full schematics, but apparently the guy in the video didn’t knew that.

If I were Framework I’d give them the schematics and kindly asked to redo the video :slight_smile:

From that video it feels almost like Framework advertised themselves as a repair-friendly company but failed, which is actually not the case.

#13

But why would there be a different schematic for repair shops and for the public?
Why cant I have the full schematic and try to repair my own board?

#14

I think @Korvin is referring to Frameworks internal documents. I saw the video Louis did where he spoke about the current state of the schematics, the indication there was a “liability” concern.

#15

This is really one of those “rubber hits the road” situations and it’s a shame shops still don’t have what they need :\

#16

@IndependentGeorge I think so?

#17

I was talking about this document which was used by a guy from the video:

This document is hosted on the Framework’s Github profile. Since it’s in public it will definitely not contain anything under NDA, which is like 90% of all high speed and proprietary interfaces of the mainboard.

Service centers should probably sign an NDA with Framework (or maybe even with Intel) to get access to the full schematics documentation that will definitely contain everything needed for the repair.

Even so, this is already light-years ahead of other vendors that don’t share their internals even with certified service centers.

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#18

Because Framework signed NDA with Intel and other organizations that gave them limited access to their reference designs and chip specs. Usually it is strictly prohibited to share such an information.

Basically that means that Framework is not allowed to disclose their full schematics to the wider audience since it would be treated as a violation of NDA, immediate pending lawsuits, etc.

Such practices exist even for tiny components, not to mention huge monsters like modern CPUs.

1 Like
#19

As folks have noted, we do make full schematics and layout available to repair shops under a confidentiality agreement: Are schematics and boardviews available for the Framework Laptop?

From what I have seen so far, we didn’t get a request for it in this case.

9 Likes
[Victory] Framework follows through on it's promise to make schematics open to Repair Shops
#20

Thats great @nrp

@c00w if you havent taken your mainboard back (assuming it was yours), maybe just tell louis repair group about the other schematics. There is a good chance, that they dont know about it.