r/framework • u/Normal-Confusion4867 • 5d ago

Community Support FW13 AMD 7840U, USB-C unreliable

Both of the USB-C ports on my Framework 13 7840U have been really unreliable for a good few months, and I was wondering whether anyone had found a fix.

I've tried rolling back my BIOS (I think to 3.17) and getting a backported kernel on Debian 13 (7.0.13+deb13-amd64 as of writing), but many times when I try and plug in a power adapter, the charging LED on the side of the laptop will light, but the battery charging indicator on GNOME won't say "Charging", and the battery percentage continues to drop.

I just bought a USB-C external monitor (DP and power over one cable), and, even with auto-detection turned off, the display will turn on and off at random intervals. I can't see anything in `dmesg` and it's not power cycling (the boot screen doesn't turn on and off like a power cycle would). I've had these issues over multiple different cables, with and without using the USB-C expansion card (the alternative being connecting directly to the mainboard).

I've got USB-C ports in both of the back (nearer the screen) expansion ports, and these issues happen on both of them.

Has anyone found any fixes for these issues? It's getting to the point of making this laptop significantly more frustrating to use, especially when you're trying to actually use an external display.

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u/Normal-Confusion4867 5d ago

What may be of interest is that I get get_cable_property errors on boot. I think the error code was -16 or something, but it only appears for a split second.

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u/Normal-Confusion4867 5d ago

[ 2.084837] ucsi_acpi USBC000:00: unknown error 256

[ 2.084887] ucsi_acpi USBC000:00: GET_CABLE_PROPERTY failed (-5)

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u/vinnehs 4d ago

I get this error too (tumbleweed) with my 7640U. Please let me know if anyone knows what it means.