Framework Laptop Mainboard | Hacker News Reader

Framework Laptop Mainboard

github.com

1,019 pointshecanjog250 comments

I'm happy to answer any questions anyone has on this. This is an initial set of documentation, and we'll prioritize writing/creating more based on what is most useful to enable Mainboard re-use.

Incredible work.

First of all great work! But did you also consider the step after re-use? What happens to the components and the materials in recycling?

We hope and expect that many of the re-use use cases can have longer lifetimes than a laptop normally would (e.g. a pfsense box that happily chugs away in a closet for a decade), but past that point, it enters the same disposition stream that electronics can safely be recycled through by consumers. We're working on making that experience easier by having the QR code on each module point to a page that includes local certified recyclers in the future.

Ok great that's already way better then most ;) if you're interested in a LCA let me know

Any plans to sell this or other mainboards separately?

Yep, the Mainboard is available as of today: https://frame.work/products/mainboard?v=FRANFG000A

When you select the different models of mainboard the order of the "Included", "Specs", and "Additional Information" options switch places. Just a minor UI thing.

$400 for a powerful SBC with consumer-level support and drivers is a pretty great price.

Sure but outside a laptop, laptop processors make much less sense. $400 gets you a motherboard and a desktop class processor that is significantly faster.

That desktop motherboard and CPU likely requires more power, more cooling, and a bigger case.

I can see the "Framework motherboard as SBC" idea catch on for everything from set-top boxes (Steam Machines could make a comeback this way) to a poor man's blade server.

It's better for SBC. Also laptop iGPU is better than desktop.

Being able to just buy something that works when you get it is a big plus IMO.

I’ve tried a few times in the last year and finding parts (that are actually available) for a sub- $500 small-form-factor system seems to be beyond my capabilities :)

You need to get on to aliexpress for stuff like that. Plenty of router type boxes in that price range. Even lenovo, Dell, etc. sell some of these labelled as IoT gateways.

Laptop processors make sense when space is at a premium, even if it's not a mobile device. But if space isn't an issue, desktop parts are usually a better choice; you can usually power limit desktop cpus to laptop levels if power usage or heat are a constraint.

"the average Core i5-1135G7 in our database is just as fast as the Core i5-10400H, Core i5-8300H, and Ryzen 7 3700U in multi-core benchmarks. The CPU acts even nicer when under single-core load, reaching similar heights as the Ryzen 7 5600X and Core i7-8700K."

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i5-1135G7-Processor...

Does the mainboard require the keyboard and screen modules to function?

Or could one fully use it "standalone" providing they supply their own usb-c power, memory, storage + external keyboard+monitor?

edit - looks like it can. the 3d printable case is slick, wish it was sold in the store: https://frame.work/blog/mainboard-availability-and-open-sour...

It works fully standalone. Technically the only required items beyond the Mainboard itself are DRAM and a power source (USB-C or a Framework Laptop Battery).

Any word on when the batteries will be available? They've been "coming soon" for a while. I imagine there's a supply chain issue behind that -- not faulting you guys -- but it's kind of painful still not being able to replace the one part of my laptop that's guaranteed to wear out.

They are actually physically at our warehouse. The constraint has been the fulfillment logic to ensure they don't ship out from the warehouse by a method that allows air shipment. This is in progress, but in the meantime, we can manually take battery orders (an order containing only a battery) through our support form.

> The constraint has been the fulfillment logic to ensure they don't ship out from the warehouse by a method that allows air shipment.

Best of luck with that. I know with UPS even the Ground services include the possibility of going via air if the destination is even slightly disconnected from the US mainland (and I distinctly recall having to program ERP/WMS logic for blocking ORM-D shipments entirely to the Catalina Islands' zip code because UPS would accept the ORM-D-marked package, try to load it on a plane for that last hop, and then send us nastygrams about us being the ones somehow at fault for it); I don't think FedEx is any different in that regard.

It's definitely possible to ship batteries via air, but it has to be marked air cargo only and the fees are probably too steep to be worthwhile unless you're shipping a bunch at a time.

This inspired me to start tinkering on my framework laptop. Is there an integrated power switch onboard somewhere? I couldn't find one so I still needed to use the fingerprint reader connected to the input cover.

In the top left corner of the Mainboard there is a small button labelled "SW1".

Just want to chime in with some appreciation. Phenomenal work your doing for tech with ethics.

Can it be used as a single board computer like a latte panda or raspberry pi, once you supply thing like memory.

Yes, and they open-sourced a 3D-printable case just for that purpose :) https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/Mainboard/tree/main/Mec...

"We designed the Mainboard from the start as a standalone module to make upgrades easy in the Framework Laptop and to also work great as a high-performance single board computer"

This looks absolutely incredible, and given the supply issues with Intel's NUCs, couldn't have come at a better time!

Do you have an estimate of when the Framework Marketplace will be available for UK customers? Currently Marketplace links redirect to the UK homepage, and is only accessible after manually selecting "United States" as a country.

We're currently setting up the logistics infrastructure for the Marketplace for UK and EU. We'll have waitlist functionality open sooner so that you can at least browse the product catalog though.

Amazing — thank you!

The experience is a little rough with the redirect, and I'd love it if I could put an email somewhere for a reminder when it launches. Otherwise though I'm really looking forward to ordering soon!

> All you need to do is insert memory, plug in a USB-C power adapter, and hit the tiny power button on-board, and you’ve got a powered-up computer.

That's brilliant. Do you see potential for this becoming popular as a "Raspberry Pi on steroids"? Any future plans to encourage that kind of ecosystem?

We certainly hope so. As we look at the ~5 year view of this and have a substantial number of Mainboards in the wild that have been upgraded out of Framework Laptops, we want to do everything we can to foster an ecosystem of methods to re-use them. We actually announced a giveaway of 100 Mainboards to developers as part of the release today to help bootstrap this: https://forms.gle/RegGHe6R4H5cEstH9

Thanks for supporting long-lived hardware. One existing favorite is the classic Lenovo X230/X430 series, which has seen several mods over the years, with a healthy resale market.

Do you plan to offer Pro/Enterprise CPUs (Intel vPro, Ryzen Pro), for h/w security features like memory encryption or Windows secured core / VBS?

For open-source firmware and kernel/hypervisor development, it would be good to have a serial port header.

The i7-1185G7 SKU supports vPro: https://frame.work/products/mainboard?v=FRANFG000C

We also have some additional debug support through a header that we've documented here: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController

Awesome idea! Looking forward to seeing the projects that come out of this giveaway, and I hope my idea gets selected as well :)

As far as I can tell, it has no output pins. So it's not comparable to Raspberry Pi (or other ARM SBCs). More akin maybe to an Android TV box? Short of making something through USB - you can't make your own header boards or easily hook up sensors and whatnot

Technically you can use the 50 pin header we have for the input system for GPIO, i2c, and USB. The webcam and display headers also have i2c and USB: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/Mainboard/blob/main/Ele...

The GPIO would require EC firmware development, but it is technically possible: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController

Is this on the ribbon cable? Okay with a breakout board, this would be really interesting and offer something quite unique

It's actually open space right now in the market. It's an annoyance/limitation that the easiest current way to do i2c/gpio/etc hardware-y stuff involves moving to ARM/Rpi. There aren't any real easy solutions for x86 and hobbyists. I had a friend who worked in touchdesigner (which is x64 only) and it was always a bit annoying he couldn't hook say LED strips directly to his laptop and to touchdesigner (so people spend a small fortune on DMX lights). We ended up doing wifi + esps. But that's much more fragile..

Maybe ideally you'd have a header on the side of laptop kinda like the Rpi400?

But even a separate machine/baseboard would still be awesome in the hobby and education sphere

We recently built a product that utilizes FTDI chips for i2c/gpio/jtag/spi/swd-protocol support. My dev kits and bench setup uses the Adafruit FTDI breakout boards (https://www.adafruit.com/product/2264) to connect to various other circuitry. The driver and even the communication protocols are documented and open source (e.g. OpenOCD implemented their own based on the USB packets). The breakout board doesn't have 40-50 GPIO pins an RPI has, but you can hook multiple of these breakout boards to a computer. I am using 4 breakout boards with one ARM SBC each as targets, with no problems on an Intel NUC. And they are much smaller and easier to get than a RPi.

Besides the FT232H, there are larger FTDI chips with more channels. I am uncertain if one can find USB breakout boards for them, though.

oh that's really cool. What's the driver situation with something like that? On Linux do I just write to some file and it's mapped to some hardware pins? Or it's more complicated than that?

For something this powerful, you might make it into a while-house automation controller or large CNC machine, and you probably wouldn't want to hook up the IO directly to the main CPU... You'd use Ethernet for distributed IO, maybe I2C for local IO (combined with something like this: https://www.adafruit.com/product/732, which would provide much more powerful, ESD-tolerant, robust, 5V-capable inputs and outputs). A tiny handful of 3V3, low-current IO are not particularly useful for realistic use-cases. Heck, even the Beaglebone, with its 1 GHz Arm A8 and 512 MB RAM has a pair of separate microcontrollers ("PRUs") for real-time IO on the SOC.

I wish there were some higher-speed, lower-level local busses for communication with subprocessors and other IO (SPI, CAN, etc), but Ethernet is fine.

The RP2040 (Raspberry Pi Pico) has a similar feature, two programmable IO cores.

Not for distributed use, but you can interface with USB and still have real-time signal generation.

Maybe not so much a raspberry pi as a Mac Mini or other kind of small non-laptop form factor system; I'm sure that, especially with these plans, someone can make a VESA-compatible mount.

From the blog post accompanying the release: "In addition to 2D drawings of the Mainboard to help you design your projects, we’ve released two 3D-printable reference designs. One is a minimal VESA-mount holder that lets you attach the Mainboard to a monitor or TV, while the other is a fully featured small form factor desktop case."

People are already using them in place of lattepandas etc for cyberdeck builds.

https://youtu.be/y8jiYl0CzKc

Are all schematics, BoM, PCBs released with open licenses?

Is anything patented?

Would you welcome other companies making compatible components?

From the GitHub link:

> licensed under CC BY 4.0

> All of this is a starting point for a broader set of open source Mainboard documentation to enable creation of fully compatible third-party Mainboards in the future.

I don't see any full electronic schematics/BoM in the repo; they don't tell you how to replicate or modify the electronics, just how to fit the form factor.

It'd help to include a copy of the license, rather than a link to some other website.

Legally, it is a bit of an issue as the linked license could technically change.

Technically, it prevents github from recognizing CC-BY-4.0 as the repository license.

Good catch, we uploaded a LICENSE file.

I like the idea of x86 SBCs because of ARM SBC issues with the lack of SBSA, while x86 computers ship with ACPI support.

Now when are the AMD mainboards coming? ;)

Yes, I am waiting for the AMD version, as well. No doubt a lot of us are.

Gotta say I was disappointed when the first ones out were Intel.

I'm in the same boat. When AMD mainboard will be out, I am planning to stuff the Intel one into a Fractal case and just have another server for the home server zoo.

So was I, as I was in the market for a new computer when they came out. Hopefully they'll jump on Zen 4 when it comes out.

Will there be information on important parameters of the main board/PCB? I'm not exactly talking about physical dimensions or enclosure design itself - but as a mechanical engineer I have no idea what sort of safe flexural tolerance a PCB might have, or if there's some available data on shock and drop tolerances of the board.

Also a quick qn 2 - any plans for a "smaller" board (maybe v2/later)? The current size is fine for a laptop but not ideal if someone is looking for building a tablet/small cyberdeck style device.

Great question on the additional parameters. I'll take that back to our mechanical engineering team.

Thanks!

Many of us prefer larger laptops and find 13.5" too small for regular use. If a larger body were developed there would presumably be space for additional battery in addition to a larger keyboard and screen, maybe even more ports or extra devices[0]. Alternatively the system could be used as a screen-tablet with a wireless keyboard. Were either of these form factor changes considered as a potential design path during development? Do you have any plans to provide these as options in future? Presumably other than sourcing the panel, larger inbuilt keyboard and machining alternate cases neither option would be substantially difficult.

[0] Expansion card program at https://community.frame.work/c/developer-program/expansion-c... shows ethernet, cellular, wireless charging.

Agreed, I also am not interested in anything not at least close to 16 inches.

("That's what she said"?)

More ports would require another mainboard sku. But yeah I'd love a 15+ inch with 6 ports and more battery.

Why? The ports don't need to be independent host-side channels. Worst case the addition of one extra embedded USB-C hub should allow almost any number of ports and devices to be added.

Are there plans to release full schematics to help with board level repair?

We're able to make schematics and board views available to repair shops, but not to individual end users: https://knowledgebase.frame.work/en_us/availability-of-schem...

Why not?

My first guess would be NDAs

I wouldn't expect so. All you get of third party parts on the schematic is the names of the pins, and that generally isn't kept secret. Sometimes the detailed functional descriptions of each pin are, but generally not anything you'd see from the schematic.

If you look at the Open Compute project, there's full schematics available for boards that have far more interesting parts than what would be on this.

Intel has become notoriously secretive with their documentation over the years, so I think that is very much the issue here. The 8086/8 were very open, but they started closing off little bits at a time after that. "Appendix H" in the P5 era was the first major sign of it. Bits and pieces have leaked out over time, but they still want to keep a lot of it secret.

For comparison, someone has made an entire 386 PC motherboard himself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29273829

I suspect there's enough information out there publicly to do everything up to perhaps a PIII (Socket 370 era) or thereabouts, but it starts being much harder beyond that.

Guessing so that Chinese clones don't flood market with knockoffs?

They would do that anyway, publicly-available schematics or no.

A lot of existing (leaked) x86 mobo schematics are already available to anyone who cares to look. I don't think there's much "secret sauce" in a standard PC anyway, at least at the component interconnect level; it's almost like one of the worst-kept-secrets in the industry. There is a lot of commonality between all the designs. They might differ in the exact parts they use (e.g. VRM MOSFETs) but there's only so many ways to make something that works.

The link doesn't make clear why end users can't have access to this.

What is the definition of a "repair shop"?

I have, on my property, a standalone building in which I engage in a variety of activities to include fairly deep level repair of electronics. I have surface mount soldering skills and equipment (hot air rework, magnification, soldering tips), and documented surface mount work on my blog.

But I'm not a "random corner computer shop that can replace RAM."

Do I qualify, should I want schematics?

Don't worry, if the history of all the laptops which don't even have any schematics available officially is to continue, they will be leaked soon enough.

Disagree. Many people like me who don’t operate a formal shop have a Quick station and know what’s Amtech flux. I want access to schematics and boardviews. It is nonsense to withhold them.

Not exactly on this topic, but when can we hope you to start shipping to India?

Will BIOS support PCIe network card (with PCIe extender) connected to PCIe port? How many lines is it?

It's a laptop mainboard, there is no PCIe slot. Or do you mean nvme -> PCIe adaptor?

Another option is to put the nic inside a tb3 pcie enclosure and connect that. There are 4 thunderbolt ports.

From what I could find tb3 to PCIe is very expensive. NVME is basically a protocol on top of PCIe with m.2 connector.

Here's an example of m.2 to PCIe x4 adapter: https://www.delock.com/produkt/64131/merkmale.html

If adapter is possible we could use 4 port gig adapter for a nice pfsense/opnsense router or a VM server.

Understood, I actually have a m.2 to PCIe adaptor on hand now that I use with success with my honeycomb lx2. I'll test a nic for you with the framework m.2 port.

No questions but I'm very impressed there is a 3D printed case in this repository and it's designed for home 3D printers (ie. split into smaller parts, printable without supports)

Are there plans to release documentation (not just pinouts but protocol?) for other elements on the board? One of the frustrations with working with ARM SoCs is having peripherals that you just can't talk to because the vendor hasn't released documentation for it.

Could you share which peripherals you see a need for additional documentation on? In most cases where a specific IC is controlling a peripheral or interface, we're at the mercy of the IC vendor or relevant standards body (VESA, PCI-SIG, USB-IF) to decide what is public.

Are there hardware off switches for any cameras and mics?

https://frame.work/laptop says "a hardware privacy switch lets you physically cut off power to the image sensor" and "The dual MEMS microphones are connected to a hardware privacy switch". So the laptop definitely has them, but I'm not sure if they're part of the mainboard.

Yep, they are actually part of the webcam module: https://frame.work/blog/1080p-webcam

It's cool that the repo has 3D printable cases. But are there any plans of officially making and selling a "ThinkPad killer" chassis where the laptop is more durable, has TrackPoint, and classic keyboard?

I'd love to see a TrackPoint option, and so would many other prospective customers.

https://community.frame.work/t/any-chance-of-trackpoint/1026

Lenovo is doing the opposite of what Framework is doing by soldering down memory and making ThinkPads less repairable. Framework has a great opportunity to take in disillusioned ThinkPad customers who are only staying with Lenovo because of the TrackPoint.

More durable being the key point here. Anecdotally I remember reading horror stories once ppl upgrade about the cooling.

+1. I badly want a modern interpretation of a Thinkpad that is true to its IBM roots. 7 rows, trackpoint, 3 mouse buttons, toughness, drain holes, and a silly amount of ports.

Edit: And I want my ThinkLight back! It's not enough to light the keys from underneath -- the ThinkLight was great for giving a little glow around the laptop to light the working area up a bit when in a darkened room. I did a lot of homework under a ThinkLight. And extra points if we can make it shine in red!

Sorry for the tangent, but any plans to open sales to Australia and New Zealand soon? I personally know a handful of people who will buy this and the laptop if given a chance.

I am also waiting to get a Framework in NZ. Hopefully they will partner with a local company to provide support. Having a repairable laptop is all very well, but not if we had to wait 6 weeks for the part to arrive.

I'm one of them. Such a shame that we can't get them here in Aus. I very nearly ordered it through a re-shipper system. If AusPost still did theirs, I would've!

Not really a Mainboard related question..... But I also wonder if it is possible for Framework to offer a global shipping option? I would totally handle import tax and customs fees etc myself if such option becomes available.

Any component which has an electricity or wireless "uplink" will require regulatory approval before entering a market.

Just "shipping" is not good enough if you are a hardware producer who cares whether the product can be legally operated in a country.

Understood.

However, I think maybe there are ways to achieve delivery even if the manufacturer is not operating in the destination country? Maybe through a third-party partner such as Amazon?

This Chromebook (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YMM4YC1/) for example, ships from the US and can be delivered straight to my hand even Google don't actually operate here.

Currently, if I want to buy the laptop, I have to hire a courier company to proxy the package (from their US warehouse to the destination country), the company will handle import and customs. But given the nature of the business, the package might be damaged or lost, and when it did, I might only get the courier fee refunded.

Amazon on the other hand, almost never fail, and even if they did fail, I can still get all my money back.

I would totally pay a small premium to get my laptop and other hardware safely delivered. So... I hope Framework consider this.

They gave a IMO good overview of the difficulties of selling to a new country in a previous post :

> With our supply improving, you may be wondering when you can order a laptop if you’re outside of the US and Canada. We selected and are bringing up our worldwide warehousing and fulfillment partner, which is one very key part of the equation, but it takes quite a lot more than that to enable a complete experience in each country. Picking Germany as one example, we need German language keyboards, a Type F power cable, in-box paperwork and labeling in German, localization for the Framework website, support documentation, and checkout flow, support for local payment methods, calculation of Euro prices and taxes, accounting support for German income, creation of legally sound Terms of Sale, Privacy, and Warranty policies for Germany, CE certifications, a local Authorized Representative to back up the certifications, determination of HS codes and tariffs, an Importer of Record to be able to deliver duty paid, German-language in-time-zone customer support, reverse logistics and RMA support for returns and repairs, region-specific sourcing of off the shelf memory and storage, trial builds of German laptops prior to production, and back-end ERP infrastructure to tie all of this together. That sounds like a lot, but it’s actually a drastically simplified summary.

https://frame.work/ca/en/blog/scaling-up-infrastructure

> Picking Germany as one example, we need German language keyboards,

Australia and NZ are easier because there is no new language involved (both use English); unlike UK, there isn’t even a different keyboard layout, both using the US English layout (but I suppose some people in the UK would be happy to buy it even if it had a US keyboard.) The only physical hardware change required would be a different mains power cord. Some of the other issues (regulatory/tax/currency/customs/etc) would still exist, but cutting the language issue out must simplify things.

Delivery and taxes are the smallest of all problems. When you bring devices into general circulation you have to follow the law for these devices on local grounds. Trading partners can indeed do the necessary qualifications for that, but it is the same bells and whistles. You can avoid it secretly (aka. Pay a courier and hope that the customs officer does not check the certifications on the product). If you as a user use it and the product behaves badly you can get seriously fined (e.g. disturbance of the radio spectrum).

It is costly, very time consuming (think months to years) and very risky (the authorities often reject things and you need to go back to the drawing board) to do it the official way.

When you're ready to expand in APAC, please add Singapore too!

I got mine via vPost, no problems.

Hello! Happy Framework laptop owner here.

Any plan to release an AMD alternative mainboard?

Very interested in this too. I would actually replace the Intel mainboard in my framework laptop and then use it for something else.

How is the thermal management? It's a notoriously difficult part of a design. Thinkpads for example tend to excel and Dell tends to fail miserably.

Does it get very hot in your lap for example?

According to the thermometer right now: 50°C

Sometimes it reaches 75%

It's not hot by computer standards per se, but since it's built out of aluminum, there are moments when you wouldn't want to have it on your lap because it would be somewhat painful. Specially with some heavy compilation going on

Here's a great discussion in the community forum about AMD alternatives, and why the company, especially at such an early stage, might refrain from discussion, etc. I don't speak for the company, just a fan.

https://community.frame.work/t/amd-cpus-an-open-letter-to-th...

Are schematics available?

Also, thank you very much. I love my Framework laptop!

2 questions:

1) When are you planning to launch in India?

2) Have you thought about launching your own Linux distro optimized for Framework? You could upgrade Linux desktop experience. That would be awesome.

+1 for India. I'd really like to get one.

+1 for own Linux distro.

Apple always had the advantage of controlling both the hardware and the software.

Also, in the Linux space, I had amazing experience with Raspberry Pi OS. Not only that it works well out of the box, but being the OS most people use on that specific hardware makes searching for answers to any issues much easier.

Ideally though it would be as close as possible to an existing distro and only include patches needed for good Framework support.

Yes, that could be easier to rather develop it from scratch.

> +1 for own Linux distro.

It's a bad idea to force users to use one distro. There are many users who run NixOS, and others prefer Ubuntu, or even Gentoo.

> Apple always had the advantage of controlling both the hardware and the software.

Controlling my own hardware is exactly what I look for when buying a laptop.

> Apple always had the advantage of controlling both the hardware and the software.

And this is exactly why anyone who likes that approach can & will buy an Apple laptop. Framework is clearly going for the opposite of that market. Instead of being a (necessarily) worse clone of Apple, I think it makes sense for them to cater to the market they are clearly aimed at, which is not people who are happy with a walled-garden system.

How is having the option, besides Windows, to order the laptop preinstalled with a default, well tuned and well supported Linux distro a "walled garden"? Also, most patches in this distro would presumably end up merged upstream anyway.

I was referring to the prospect of their spending time working on their own distro, at the expense (considering the finitude of human lifespans etc) of supporting others. As with so many arguments, your point makes total sense until you consider that human effort is a finite resource.

There are already far too many distros (and DEs) out there. Working with the commons would be a far better approach.

Once you start getting into specific hardware optimizations you are basically throwing up your hands on the interoperable approach that is a strength of Linux. There is no reason why those changes can't be upstreamed.

Please don't ask for their own Linux distro. Upstreamimg their hardware drivers is enough. Their resources are better spent innovating at the hardware level. And upstream support for frame.work hardware means frame.work users can take advantage of all the innovation happening in the linux ecosystem because all distros would run on it.

Yes, I can see some partnership with an existing distro (something like « merge our drivers asap and you get preinstalled ») but IMO, the company behind Framework should focus on its strengths on the hardware design. I think they are on a hard market and it would make me sad to throw money into making another distribution.

Furthermore, I think that, atm, their target market may be 95% of power users who will flash a usb stick with their favorite OS even before receiving the computer.

I think that have a working/unofficial? relationship with some people from Fedora. I remember announcements some time ago that everything is working with it. Also given Fedora's upstream first approach that was a very good choice of them.

System76 has done good work on Linux support for (seemingly) similar hardware: https://tech-docs.system76.com/models/lemp10/README.html - some of that might be reusable.

pls no custom distro - i dont want something that breaks in specific ways

When does it come available to the rest of EU?

wow that is so nice.

Please please please keep the control of your company. The world desperately needs companies like yours.

  Note that you'll need some fasteners to install everything (see https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Fasteners+Guide/106 for all fastener types)

  - 5x Mainboard fasteners - M1.6 1.5mm fastener with a 5.5mm diameter T5 head and 0.6mm thread pitch
  - 3x Audio Board and WiFi card fasteners - M2 3.0mm fastener with a 4.5mm diameter T5 head and 0.7mm thread pitch

These arent ISO metric thread pitches. Why not use standard fasteners? I cant find these to buy anywhere online (even with different heads) - even your own website doesnt stock them...

EDIT: looks like im not the only one to ask - theres an unanswered question on that guide since Apr 2 asking the same thing.

This is most likely an error in our fasteners guide (which I wrote, so it's on me). I just sanity checked one of the M2 fasteners with calipers, and it does indeed follow the ISO standard 0.4mm pitch. We'll double check the numbers we listed for pitch.

For the 3D printed cases, for simplicity we didn't design in threaded inserts, so you can use self-tapping M2 or M1.6 fasteners with approximately the right length and head size and it'll work.

I find under-sizing the holes a bit and hitting the screws with a heat gun before picking them up with a magnetic screwdriver and screwing them in works really well.

Undersizing holes is just a brilliant way to ask for cracks down the road.

not if the screw melts the plastic, the same way heated threaded insert would?

Thanks for checking - I thought it would be a strange thing to do given the product messaging.

Why no modular GPU?

Did you ever consider ECC Memory support? This would make SOHO workstations and storage appliances interesting to build with your board...

I don't think intel mobile CPUs support ecc

Any plans to adopt Coreboot or provide documentation and support to developers who want to port Coreboot to your mainboards?

We've handed three systems that can boot unsigned bootloaders to folks in the coreboot community. Our plan in the near term is to help them create a shim loader that can be signed to run on any Framework Laptop, which then enables anyone to do further coreboot development.

Congratulations on the project. Any plans for a 17 Inch screen?

The link https://frame.work/marketplace/mainboards seems broken. It redirects me to https://frame.work/nl/en

Same here when accessing from the UK - marketplace links just redirect back to the main laptop purchasing page.

Hi Nirav, This might be a tangent. Do you have any plans for eink display modules for the Framework laptop? I know it’s a niche and the eink panels are expensive, but it would be amazing for a portable machine.

I'd also be interested in this. But at the same time, I guess it's more likely that a third party will produce this, because Framework has other priorities.

For those who might wonder why eInk would be cool: Much better reading experience on the screen and insanely long battery life.

I’m a huge eink display fan, to the point of owning multiple tablet-shaped devices with larger EPDs. I agree that the reading experience for effectively static text and b/w images is great, but once you introduce any scrolling or transitions it quickly becomes worse than a standard LCD. UIs really need to be optimized for eink, just like they should be designed differently for smartphones, big desktop displays, and screen readers or other assistive tech.

W.r.t. power: I don’t think EPD magically runs on less power _while refreshing_. So again, if you are mostly displaying static text and figures —- like in an ebook reader —- it’s great. If you’re constantly repainting the UI, less so.

As much as we may like to think programming is all about staring at walls of text in editor buffers we’ve carefully tuned for readability, IME at least I spend a lot of time switching between an editor, live view of my running app, documentation, log and trace views, etc.

Neither a slow refresh (4-10 fps) with major ghosting or a glacially slow (<1 fps) one that’s clean is actually a very good trade off with most modern workflows. Including ones that are nominally about text, like coding.

When do you expect these computers will become coreboot compatible?

Are you limited in how much documentation you can release because of contracts or legal reasons? For example, if Framework or another company wanted to build a fully open source mainboard for an Intel or AMD processor would that be possible?

any chance there might be a thinkpad x/t series style case made for these?

knocking off the mac is kinda cute, but mac laptop ergonomics and durability are terrible.

I've got 2 questions unrelated to the mainboard.

Will a matte screen be supported?

Will a thinkpad style keyboard be available for the framework? Raynaud's syndrome makes trackpad sensing poor.

Is it possible to buy just the mainboard with CPU and heatsink/fan unit, for integration into one's own embedded system? Assuming the obvious need to supply the correct DC power and other connectors/IO interface pieces.

https://frame.work/products/mainboard?v=FRANFG000C

are there plans for AMD and Qualcomm based mainboards?

My current laptop needs to be replaced really soon, I'm hoping Framework will announce either a recent AMD Ryzen or Intel's Alder Lake. The difference between the 11th and 12th gen Intel is big enough I don't want to spend the next three years regretting it.

Unfortunately Lenovo or Dell might get my budget if it looks like that's not going to happen for a while. This laptop has had a few too many drops off of my bike (which is why repairability would be great!).

> The difference between the 11th and 12th gen Intel is big enough I don't want to spend the next three years regretting it.

With the Framework though, the CPU (motherboard) is intended to be replaceable. There will likely be (assuming there isn't one already) a secondary market of individual parts.

Buying an obsolete laptop now and upgrading it in a few months is not a good use of money though.

It's also not a good use of the earths resources, which i think is part of the ethos of framework.

Electronic components are some of the most profitable materials to recycle.

The whole "it's more green" thing is marketing fluff.

Reduce > Reuse > Recycle

Recycling is the worst of the three by far.

Well, the framework hardware is much more likely to be used by somebody who can buy it secondhand, unlike a lot of laptops that are intentionally designed to be a pain to reuse/repair.

When I buy a laptop with an upgrade path in mind, the hope is that I will do so in 2-3 years, not next week. Otherwise I am just spending a bunch of money on hardware that I will not actually use for very long.

Alder Lake and Zen 3 have been out for a while now, so I do not think it is unreasonable to expect a brand new laptop to ship with either of them.

> I do not think it is unreasonable to expect a brand new laptop to ship with either of them.

For a Dell, HP, or other multinational conglomerate who gets new chipsets in advance from Intel and always has a dozen or more models on the never ending merry-go-round of 'hype the new, dump last seasons at Costco on the people who don't know any better', no, it's not unreasonable.

For a small batch manufacturer who's been shipping laptops less then a year and is still effectively on their first model release? All in the middle of a pandemic induced supply chain fiasco?

It kind of is.

Maybe for Alder Lake, but Zen 3 has been around for an eternity, and is already on the cusp of being succeeded by Zen 4. Zen 3 is also so much better than 11th gen Intel that I struggle to understand why any manufacturer would have chosen Intel for their new flagship laptop in 2021.

This is spot on. If Framework offered Zen 3 and 120hz+ display, I would absolutely buy one immediately.

On any thread on framework, comments in the form of "I'd buy one right now if it had X" are probably the most common, for quite a few X ;-)

That being said, I'm also waiting for an AMD CPU. Given that it is the most requested feature, though, I assume they'll be there in the next iteration.

> Maybe for Alder Lake, but Zen 3 has been around for an eternity

5000 series Zen 3 has on desktop. Zen 3 based 6000 series laptops with RDNA2 graphics are still newish and a little difficult to get. Even from tier-1 brands.

AMD was also a little late to getting Linux support into these computers. 5.17 (released a few weeks ago and is what Fedora 36 will release with) just got support into the Ethernet driver.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5....

Mobile Alder Lake just launched (in Feb?). Don't confuse the desktop with the mobile variants-especially when you are considering driver support.

Lenovo P series has great repairability! Will definitely be getting a framework next, though.

Or for that matter, high end ARM chips :)

Is there any manufacturer with plans to come out with an Apple Silicon-level ARM chip (in terms of performance and efficiency)? Ever since the first benchmarks for the M1 chips started appearing I've been kinda dreaming of a Raspberry-Pi style system with a high performance ARM chip.

Qualcomm, maybe. They aquired Nuvia (many ex-Apple people), who was designing such a processor.

Nvidia Orin, but they're charging a fortune for it.

I'd want better mainline support for it. Either full mainline kernel support or something akin to it from Nvidia. My Jetsons were stuck on Ubuntu 18.04 since early 2020, with the old 4.19 kernel. They only recently beta'd a 20.04-based build with Kernel 5.10. Full release is 2022Q4. Somewhat like their "18.04" upgrade - very, very late. Sure, I could backport, try to upgrade on my own, etc. Some people have done so. Results were varied.

IMO, Nvidia is comparing themselves to embedded vendors. For general compute, I'd like vendors to keep up with the Fedoras, sids, and Tumbleweeds of the world, at the very least. Not asking for arch, btw :)

Hopefully Nvidia's server ambitions with Grace will see them take on general compute.

For ARM64 performance, if you don't mind a desktop instead, there's https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ADLINK-A... with a 32-core Altra A1 in it including RAM for 4000 USD. It is very reasonable when compared to a Threadripper.

In terms of power efficiency you'll need to wait until Apple stops monopolizing TSMC's N5 node.

Apple almost singlehandedly invented the ARM64 ISA, and bankrolled the leading-edge TSMC process, so it's probably okay for them to have the best SoC for a while as long as others have a fair chance of catching up soon.

for now I'd settle for -- and am really hoping for -- a CM4 carrier board. Obviously it wouldn't be able to do full tb4 through the usb ports like the x86 board but I'm ok with that.

Something higher end would be fantastic too, but this feels like a walk before we get to run kind of situation.

CM4 means Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4? That is a wonderful (albeit expensive for a Pi) idea!

This. I'm in the same boat. No way am I buying an 11th gen when 12th gen is out. Upgradability shmupgradability if I need to upgrade 6 months or so after purchase.

Out of interest, do you use your laptop as your primary personal computer, or do you just have a laptop on you for portability?

The 3D printable, open-source, case that allows you to use the mainboard as a standalone computer is such a nice touch! https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/Mainboard/tree/main/Mec...

Wow, these guys are awesome. Love to see a company take a new, and potentially long view towards customers and profitability. Most companies in their position would be jealously guarding this information and would be paranoid about cheap clones taking away their market/customers. But this team is not.

Shows they are confident in their ability to not just rest on laurels, but continue to develop a platform, add value, and earn their customers business.

Now, if only we could get a lovely M1 Pro chip (or something like it) into their deserving hands! At the moment my Mac 16 Pro is unbelievably better than all the x86 competition out there ... except for the fact that its a totally proprietary and unrepairable black box.

I would love to see AMD, Nvidia, or a company like SiFive release something like the M1 Pro, and then an integrator like Framework put it all into a great package and finally give Apple the competition they need.

Oh, that's cool - so you could use the mainboard as a SBC? Put a few of them in a case with a (big) PSU and some I/O (storage, probably) and have a cluster-in-a-box?

Or, in the opposite direction, is this material enough to create a drop-in replacement board with, say, an ARM (or eventually RISC-V) processor that you could put in a Framework Laptop?

This release is aimed more at the former. We're happy to connect with and support anyone who wants to make a serious attempt at a drop-in replacement board though, and would use that exercise to create more documentation to share publicly.

I'm looking forward to people putting Steam Deck motherboards into Frameworks...

Or Framework motherboards into even more ludicrously large Steam Decks.

I hope these guys are around long enough to put out a V2 and I hope that V2 has some different screen options.

For me the resolution either needs to be ideal for 100% scaling or for 200% scaling, nothing in between.

I have the Framework, and I haven't noticed anything off with the display's "in-between" resolution.

I have one too, using it with Linux.

I'm using it with fractional scaling at 175% and I notice that it's less sharp than with either 100% and 200%.

I use pop!_os 22.04 beta with wayland and fractional scaling 125%. Some software needs to be told to use wayland stuff, but otherwise it is sharp as a tack.

For instance: MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 firefox

Same here. I’m using it with Fedora and wayland’s 150% scaing works perfectly nowadays.

Everything appears sharp? I had had issues with Ubuntu and fractional scaling a while back with blur, but I'd elated if this is something that's been worked out in wayland. Come to think of it, wayland may have been fine, and xorg was the issue. I'm forgetting at the moment.

I haven't tried Fedora lately, but I had trouble with fractional scaling on Ubuntu, especially when combined with X11 apps. Ultimately this was part of what (but not the only thing that) drove me to switch to running Windows 10 on my Framework, which handles the laptop's screen resolution very well.

The blog post has more information: https://frame.work/blog/mainboard-availability-and-open-sour...

How to get an invoice?

For some strange reason it's still not possible to get an invoice and people and businesses are having issues with that.

https://community.frame.work/t/how-to-get-an-invoice/16033/

https://community.frame.work/t/where-can-i-find-my-invoice/1...

ha ha... what? how is it even legal for goods without invoice to enter the EU?

I guess it's similar as when you buy through eBay or something (only guessing, not justifying it)

Until a while ago it was notoriously difficult to get an invoice when buying from Amazon Europe.

I'm 3 days in to using a Framework running Ubuntu as my main computer, switching from an XPS 13. So far, I'm delighted. Thank you for making this computer.

I'm a few days away. Waiting for my Framework to arrive. I probably have never been this excited about a laptop in my whole life.

Don't let battery drain scare you like it did to me. There is a workaround that alleviates that a little with deep sleep mode on. Although, not perfect it's bearable. Aside from that I've been a happy customer for a solid 5 months now.

Random aside, just last week one of my friend's kid dropped some sticky food on keyboard and closed the lid leaving my keyboard virtually unusable. I was able to just unscrew everything and clean the keyboard and get it to working again. Would have never been possible with Macs. :D

I'm not too worried about the battery issue. 22.04 lts comes out tomorrow so I'll do a clean install of that and get things dialed in this weekend.

As if I didn't have enough reason to be happy about my decision to buy a Framework, here they are, giving me yet another reason - and possibly even a reason to buy a spare mainboard for a tiny desktop.

This is incredibly cool. Love to see anything that encourages repair and reuse of parts that still have some life left in them!

If I hadn’t just recently bought a new laptop I’d likely be going for a Framework today, and provided they’re still around when it’s time for an upgrade it’ll probably be my next laptop. (I suspect it’ll be a while before I need a new one though.)

I’ve gotten into handtool woodworking somewhat deeply this year, and this is giving me serious desires to create a wooden chassis for something... retro.

I have an old metal break in the garage I have been meaning to make a laptop chassis out of copper or brass. I think it would be dope to have a unique looking steam-punkish designed laptop

Hand-made has given me a new perspective on opulence. Maybe it’s just the Ikea effect on overdrive, but making the things you want is so satisfying in terms of the process, and the one-of-a-kind results can be really prideful.

The EOMA68 project had some similar goals to Framework and had an optional wooden chassis: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop

They haven't had much activity in the last few years though, and the compute card for it is now very outdated.

Do you have any resources that helped you dive in? I'd love to get into it myself. Besides some general woodworking classes, I'm not sure where to start.

For hand-tool woodworking specifically there are a number of youtube content creators that are good: James Wright, Paul Sellers, Rex Kreuger, etc. I pay James Wright a token sum each month via patreon, because his pedagogy is so good and comprehensive. I do the same for Rex Kreuger because his woodworking forum is extremely well run and full of people who'll take time to answer questions and offer support on projects.

One thing I wish I could have done was visit someone who already had tools. Getting started with hand-tools can be expensive, and I've both over- and under-spent on some of the bootstrapping gear. After getting some of the basic gear, a good first step is building a workbench, as it's impossible to do much of anything with handtools without.

Awesome, thanks so much!

Side note, I think the STL viewer in github is such a cool feature

TIL -- thank you for pointing that out!

Great stuff! Can't wait for an old-man version that's 15.6", 16" or 17" :)

Surprised to see the prebuilt laptops come with windows. I was expecting Ubuntu or some other mainstream Linux distro.

I assume a large segment of users install Linux? How does the trackpad experience compare to macOS?

I think they just wouldn't have had the same press coverage in the tech press if they were selling a "Reparable Linux laptop" instead of a "Reparable laptop".

For the general public, it's not obvious that an OS can be changed.

We ship the DIY Edition without an OS to let folks bring their preferred distro. We looked at doing a pre-built SKU with a Linux distro, but found that preference is fairly even among the top five or so most popular distros with a long tail of distros beyond that. We recently launched a Linux compatibility page to make it easier for folks to select a distro for their DIY Edition: https://frame.work/linux

I would buy this laptop once my current laptop dies (don't want to produce unnecessary e-waste) if it had coreboot. Until then, I'm planning to use system76. I'm conflicted between that though, because I want to support small business, but I'm not sure which one to support!

You cannot go wrong with either, I have been very happy with my system76 laptop, One company is open source hardware the other is open source software. I wish both could cooperate and do some great work.

The Framework pricing seems crazy, it'd cost about 2400 euros to get it in my country (where it isn't sold directly atm). That's over 2 months of discretionary spending (net income after mortgage + student debt).

And it doesn't offer an ISO keyboard either.

For 2400 euros I could almost buy a whole computer, TV and an Xbox...

The prices are more comparably reasonable in the US, but still on the expensive side compared to Apple because they don't have the economies of scale. Important thing to realize is that the Framework laptop is a super-premium piece of hardware. Holding it and using it the quality level is better than anything other than an Apple laptop.

If it's not sold directly, how would they be able to control the pricing? Framework starts at 1149 € for the base spec, the DIY version starts at 899 €. A MacBook Pro starts at 1449 €, seems fair to me.

I don't understand why you'd write "my country". How is that supposed to mean anything to anybody. Why not write which country it is?

They certainly do offer ISO-ish keyboards (with the exception of the unfortunate arrow key layout, which breaks 9995-5), as I'm typing on one right now. They don't offer them pre-installed for US orders, if you're looking there; try looking on their EU site instead. In the US, however, you can order the keyboards separately for around $40; the case is designed to support both ISO and ANSI layouts with the same cutouts.

As another commenter has pointed out, there is the quirk, however, that their "English International" keyboard is ANSI. Their British, German, French, etc keyboards are.

Big fan, few small things.

AMD models, and maybe even arm64 mainboards would be lit.

16 inch variant, black and white options.

Oh, and if possible, coreboot please.

Keep up the good work, you have my money

This announcement's quite neat on its own. But if the board had an exposed PCIe connector, they'd be fantastic to build a SFF PC around.

> I did a quick check with a TBT2 eGPU I have and it is recognized. We can grab some newer GPU docks and test to confirm they work. But yes should work.

> yes, tbt3/usb4 tops out at 32gbps, which is about the same as pcie gen 3 x4 - so will not be the same speed as a x16 slot on a desktop, but still plenty fast for a lot of use cases.

from the frame.work forums

so you practically have a PCIe slot/s available if you get an adapter for them

That’s not as great as a typical x16 slot you’d find for a native graphics card, and comes with all of the usual TB baggage. But it’s definitely an option for some other types of cards.

I welcome the approach here it's much better.

I think the company has some way to go yet in terms of maturing overall as a laptop manufacturer. You can see a few of the problems on here e.g. invoices, old cpu ...etc. To me though the biggest problem is that there laptop isn't really bringing any feature that's new to the table.

The repair-ability is awesome don't get me wrong but getting a laptop repaired isn't something new it's just they've made that part easier.

Example here is the new M1 macbooks have insane battery life, excellent touchpad / gesture support, insanely thin. Asus Rog make crazy fast gaming laptops with almost desktop like performance and still in a reasonable looking form factor. Dell make really cheap (and shit) laptops with amazing availability. System76 make linux based laptops.

I could go on but I think if they want to survive as a company they need something more than "it's easy to repair".

I wish I could justify buying a laptop from Framework because I like what they do and would like to support them.

How long until we see someone cluster 10 of these in a 4U rack?

This might be a tangent. Do you have any plans for eink display modules for the Framework laptop? I know it’s a niche and the eink panels are expensive, but it would be amazing for a portable machine.

Are these going to start shipping to Australia within the next 2~3 months?

I would love to buy one of these and hack it into something absurd, if only I had the money to burn!

Love what you're doing Framework, I will purchase one of your products in the future for sure :)

This is rather cool. I sometimes think about using a laptop motherboard in a custom built case and pushing the CPU/GPU to their limits (no bueno without that, BIOS must allow full voltage/TPL control).

Is it practical? Maybe if you want a very thin/light/quiet desktop that can run a long time on a built-in battery... otherwise, just an interesting project and a way to reuse older laptop boards.

Nice to see the mechanical designs getting published.

Has anyone yet designed an adapter board for fitting rpi compute module 4 in the case?

It would be interesting if you can build something like Mac Studio desktop for linux.

I mean, you can build your own with any Mini-ITX motherboard. The only thing is you don't have the tight integration of soldered RAM, the quality slave-assembled parts, and the two years of faster speed before lowering performance for power consumption reasons.

16 inch, 500 nits matte screen, better CPU and Linux as first class citizen.

I agree and also 17 inch :)

Was looking forward to this. Excited to see what people can make with an easily available high powered SBC.

Is there any way to get two 10gbe Intel nics on one of these?

You could use "USB-C to Ethernet" converter(s).

Via Thunderbolt probably.

I never understood why someone just didn't build a Ethernet over TB-4 switch with USB-C cables instead of RJ45/SFP+ ports. Yes you'd be limited to 1 to 2 meters of cable length, but you could still add a proper ethernet port as a backhaul.

Yes it might not be as fast, but in the end, all SATA, TB4, and ethernet does is push bits over a wire.

This is so cool!

That's how you do it!

will this laptop ever ship with a non-US keyboard layout? The enter key is so bad on them, I hate that it is long and not high. Dealbreaker unfortunately, wish I could buy one of these.

As with other manufacturers, keyboard availability is determined by the region. If you import one from the UK, you'll have different keyboard options.

On top of that, the US marketplace has different keyboards available[1]: https://frame.work/marketplace/keyboards

[1]: if you're getting a redirect, switch your region to US

If anyone from Framework is reading this: It appears as though the image[1] accompanying the US International keyboard on the US Framework Marketplace[2] is inaccurate. It seems to be an ANSI keyboard with the word 'gr' crudely photoshopped into the right alt key. This is most likely a mistake, as the term 'US International' typically refers to an ISO keyboard. I would humbly suggest that Framework correct the image and clarify whether the keyboard in question is ISO or ANSI.

[1]: https://frame.work/marketplace/keyboards

[2]: https://frame.work/products/keyboard?v=FRANBKEN05

Our English International keyboard is indeed ANSI. The two differences are "Alt Gr" and a euro symbol (which is missing from that image, and which I've just captured as a bug internally). This is the keyboard layout most popularly used in the Netherlands.

^ edit: To elaborate, I believe ANSI is the correct layout for US International, but unfortunately more often than not, when I ordered US International, I got an ISO layout (n=2 out of 3). This leads me to believe that the term is ambiguous. It can mean either US layout + international labels, or US labels + international layout (the I in ISO).

As noted by other commentors, we have a wide range of keyboards currently available with the laptop, including ISO ones. In the UK and countries in the EU we currently ship to, we have British English, French, and German, which are all ISO, and English International which is ANSI. In the US and Canada, you can also swap to any of those keyboards, plus a few others like French Canadian by picking up a keyboard in our Marketplace.

Oh. Intel, huh?

It's really sad that we got so low that something so trivial gets to the front page. Where are schematics, board layouts, BOM? I am not even mentioning "Theory of operation" sections and "Calibration" which was quite common decades ago.

Why is it trivial? Did you follow the link from GitHub to the main https//frame.work website? There are close to zero other offerings of a modular mobile computing platform that function as a laptop and single board computer.

It's trivial in terms of how much documentation there is. Pinouts and dimensions are basically a given in any mobo manual. From that perspective they are just on par with the other SBCs out there. Here's a random example to compare to...

http://advdownload.advantech.com/productfile/Downloadfile4/1...

The comment may also be referencing the original IBM PC manuals, up until the AT, which contained far more information, including schematics and even BIOS source code listings.

> Where are schematics, board layouts, BOM?

Open your own repair shop and you can get all the schematics you want![1] If you're not a repair shop, enjoy your FRU replacement?

[1]https://frame.work/blog/preparing-to-ship-and-respecting-you...

perfection is the enemy of progress or something

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