It’s an older model System76 Galago. The newer ones lost the SIM (although the service manual suggests it was never actually functional, anyway), one of the audio, and the mini-DP, but gained an additional USB-C… which would be fine it they hadn’t also switched the good keyboard for the same awful ones that appear to be the current industry standard. (I don’t understand why no one uses the better keyboard, but I really, really hate that no one does. It’s not “size”, either; the HP Spectre x360 13" comes so close to being good and then botches the arrow keys.)
The service manual (n.b. page 5) seems to be the only still-available online source that shows the ports. (I’m not sure if I have the v2 or v3, but the ports are the same on both.)
What about a Serial port. If you can get one in there, you can start grabbing field support people that are stuck using those drives and connectors to talk to industrial electronics for another market group. Granted the laptop has to be beefier to survive dropping from 6 feet with the abuse they take.
Yes, I said that a week or so ago (scroll up). There are plenty of usb-serial cables available so it could just be a matter of translating the electronics from one of those into a Framework expansion card, the specs of which were coincidentally released today.. Is there an EE in the house?
Welcome to the forum, “Fanatic”! To you and to @Derek_Kulp and @Kimberlee_Model and anyone else who wants gig ethernet:
Framework have made it clear that they understand the need for gig ether and are in fact working on an expansion card with that offering.
If it’s not ready by the time the laptop starts shipping, then as a short-term stopgap, you could use - as I plan to - any of many USB- to gig-ether adapters. Some are just Ethernet, some also add addtional USB ports, PD passthrough, SD card, etc. etc. And all that for about $20-30 at the usual online discount vendors.
I’ve done a write-up on a couple of low-cost units here:
@Ian_Darwin Neat writeup. I’d never considered that a “dongle” could provide both power and ethernet. I usually abhor dongles, but I figured I could deal with one, until the ethernet expansion card is available.
I sort of wish that the expansion cards were large enough that you could fit a USB-C-PD + ethernet on the same card. They seem sort of like an in-between size where they’re too big for single ports, but maybe maybe a tick too small to comfortably fit multiple ports.
A bit off topic, but I’m failing to see the utility of USB-C. I know they can do charging/video/etc. but most peripherals (mice, headsets, flashdrives, etc.) are still USB-A and need even more dongles/converters to support USB-C. Now instead of having a smaller port, I have an even bigger converter, and yet another item which could fail on me.
@Kimberlee_Model Thanks for the feedback! My intention in posting the link to my Hubs review was not to convert people to USB-C PD hubs but to show that there are hubs that can solve the wired-ethernet problem in the short term between shipping the laptops and shipping of the Gig Ethernet expansion card. Y’all don’t need to rush out and buy one this week, unless @nrp says the gig ether expansion card won’t appear until December I too have USB-A in my shopping cart for mice & such like, and agree on the expansion card sizing, but that’s surely cast in stone, other than the fact that Nirav did mention the possibility of a community-built double-height card (with extra feet to raise the laptop).
It strikes me that the “community-built expansion card” is somewhat like open-source software. Many people have ideas on how to improve it, and (not singling you or anyone else out here) few have the technical skills to make those ideas happen, and fewer yet have the funding to hire those with the skills to make the good ideas happen I am sure there will be some, but I’m not sure how many will actually materialize. A lot, I hope, because I do believe that “choice is good.”
No; mine has the 3200x1800 screen which was discontinued in later models. (Which I like; 13" is a little small for 1920×1080… and having recently gone back to a 1920×1200 screen after “getting used to” 4k, I have to say, high-DPI really looks much better. Which is why I think the current 2256×1504 is terrible; it’s even worse for 1x scaling, and too few pixels for 2x.)
I like all of the ideas here, a would definitely love a dual USB-C port in the future, or a full-size SD card reader/Ethernet port Expansion Card
One neat idea would be an HDMI-in port to be able to utilize the Framework Laptop as a display (Think of it like a Target Display function a-la iMac)
While I don’t know much about tech or if that is possible in the small size of that expansion ad, it would come in handy if I want to record footage from any of my gaming devices or use my laptop as an external display when out at the park to play Switch hehe
Ooooh. HDMI in could be useful definitely. For example, I’d be curious if while on vacation if I could plug my chromecast into the framework laptop. @nrp what do you think. Is this currently possible with the current hdmi expansion card?
@1111 HDMI input is not supported by the HDMI expansion card. However there are several HDMI-USB bridge chips that could be used to build a HDMI capture card. You would have to go through the whole usb-os-graphics stack to render the output to the display with some latency.
@Kieran_Levin Thank you! That is unfortunate… but thankfully I do have a capture card via USB that works pretty good. Latency drops a tad bit, but it’s not bad. I use it mainly to record my Switch games on current computer
@James_cody Do you mean packing a battery into the expansion card’s size? If so, probably not. You’d probably struggle to put anything more than about 1 amp-hour into something that size, if that. That might keep the laptop running an extra few minutes, but nothing useful. However, if you opened your requirements up to something that’s bigger than the expansion card, for example some big battery pack that sits under the laptop and doubles as a stand, you could probably fit a relatively large battery that supports 60W (or higher) USB-C PD, for example. My main worry there would be that if the port is the only connection point, you might be risking damage to the USB-C port if you mishandle the laptop by even a little. Much less risk in my book to simply purchase an off-the-shelf USB-C PD power bank, and just bring that along when you think you might need the extra juice.
I too have USB-A in my shopping cart for mice & such like, and agree on the expansion card sizing, but that’s surely cast in stone, other than the fact that Nirav did mention the possibility of a community-built double-height card (with extra feet to raise the laptop).
I am sure there will be some, but I’m not sure how many will actually materialize. A lot, I hope, because I do believe that “choice is good.”