I bought one of the first batches of the L14. Unfortunately the original charger went dead a while ago (approx. half a year) and I started using a replacement charger with 19V and 2,37A so 45W.
For me it worked good. However, yesterday the battery just depleted to 0%. The battery was apparently switching between charging and not charging. I am using Qubes 4.2. I was watchng Netflix and did not recognise this until it was too late.
The current situation is as follows:
I can turn on the L14 with the battery plugged-in. However, it does not go past “Starting the new kernel”.
Without battery plugged-in, neither the 45W charger nor a USB-C 65W charger works. I have tried one for HP and another for lenovo notebook.
With battery plugged-in: The LED is green (charging)
Without battery and only charger: The LED is off and L14 does not turn on. You can here some noise from electricity/current but nothing works.
I have tried the steps described at the troubleshooting page, especially the last two steps. The resistor R839 seems to have been removed already before shipping by purism. I pust some non-conducitve tape on the two “silver domes”.
Yesterday, after taking the notebook apart and reassembling it, the battery seemed to be charging. In Pureboot → System Information I could see battery charge 23% for the first time and I was very happy. I powered-off and left it charging. Today I booted up and System Information told me 100%. I was so happy.
Since, the notebook was, however, not in the right place. I closed the casing (D-shell), disconnected it from the power supply and moved it to the other place. Now I am back to 0% according to System Information of Pureboot.
I’d be happy just to get it booting one more time and make another backup of my data.
Unfortunately, I cannot buy a replacement battery from Purism, since I am not residing in the US.
What can I do?
This to me does not specifically sound like a battery problem.
Even if you disconnect or remove the battery from the laptop, it should power up and function normally when it has AC (not so sure about USB-C)
You should test if your adapter (that previously worked fine) has power at the barrel connector or not. It’s easy to do, just insert a multimeter probe + into the connector and GND probe on the external metallic surface: then you should read if there is adequate voltage at the connector itself. If not, your AC adapter is toast (better outcome); otherwise if you read 19V or above, you have a bigger problem unfortunately.
Examine the receiving connector on the motherboard to see if not broken or loose
thanks a lot for your response. Adapter seems to be ok. Yes, it is a strange problem. Probably something on the mainboard needs resoldering.
The receiving connector seems to be ok and issue is also present with USB-C adapter(s).
Yes, I have contacted the Purism Support on Friday and will await further instructions. Unfortunately, I am not from the US, so probably only remote support possible.
Looks like a crazy-opensource BMIC, you need to buy i new battery in order to fix it permanently.
I know you want to use it without battery but this may need to change the EC firmware.
thanks
Hi carlosgonz,
sorry but I don’t really understand your comment
What is a BMIC?
What do you mean “change the EC firmware”? Is usage without battery not possible with current EC firmware? Is that the reason why I cannot boot without battery?
Best
BMIC: Battery Manager Integrated Chipset.
As far as i know, lot 0f L14 suffer from a defect or malfunction of the batteries. Only changing the battery it is the only option to solve the problem, if i remember well Purism published the battery model to buy it outside the Purism store. I dont know where that info is located.
Thanks for the detailed answer. Yes published here.
I ordered with a 4-cell battery. Unfortunately cannot find any store (except purism store) that has the model SSBS79.
However, I found some stores that seem to sell SSBS73 aftermarkets. Hope they will work.
It does not even power on without battery and just charger.
SSBS73 manufacturer is better, i recommend 3-cell battery for L14.
Weird, L14 need to boot without battery. Maybe something is wrong in Pureboot or EC or Charger. I mean my L14 boot without battery plug-in with original charger plus Coreboot.
Quick update: Booting up only with charger is now working. For others: The LEDs light up approx. 3-5 seconds, go off for approx. the same time and then go on again and notebook is booting.
So in case you have the same issue, be patient when pushing the power button.
It somehow seems that the notebook is not able to draw sufficient current when first lighting up or for some reasons needs short “power push”.
Moreover, it may have worked because I unplugged the battery and then instantly after that connected the charger and pushed the power button.
I believe that with the USB-C charging adapter, it goes through the USB-C-PD protocol and may not be reliable when there is no battery. Have you tried using the barrel jack charger (or is that what you meant by the “45W charger”)???
Unfortunately my problems came back. I cannot really boot anymore, not sufficient power from battery and charger only does not work.
I bought a 3-cell battery with the same specs as Purism’s from akkubuy.de, since they got a good rating on trustpilot.
Came (obviously) from China.
At first the notebook booted with the battery. But I think I made it worse with trying to get a replacement battery.
After having the battery charged one night, librem 14 is not booting with only charger, with only battery and with both attached.
It is only booting with old 4-cell battery and charger. Problem is that the 4-cell battery + charger is unreliable, because the battery does not really get charged.
I have checked this thread.
I don’t think I need the resistor for the 3-cell battery, as I got the same board version as FrankyFlawless in this thread:
It could have something to do with EC firmware, because sometimes the charger (any charger, also USB) is not recognized. You can also see in the rescue shell/terminal under /sys/class/power_supply/AC/online that it is continuously switching between 0 and 1, indicating that it is switching between charger recognized and not. The charger is new and tested with multimeter; it is steadily delivering 19V voltage.
Since the laptop is not booting from charger and 4-cell-battery is unreliable to use, I tried upgrading the EC firmware via CH341A flasher. I have the same model used in the Purism guide.
I have tried from Fedora as well as PureBoot Live ISO.
Both times I got the same output not recognising the EC chip.
According to the above Purism post it should recognise the chip as GD25Q80. However, I get the output “unknown SPI chip (RDID)” (0 kB, SPI) and WRITE operaiton not being supported.
pureos@pureos:~$ sudo flashrom -p ch341a_spi
flashrom v1.2 on Linux 5.10.0-23-amd64 (x86_64)
flashrom is free software, get the source code at https://flashrom.org
Using clock_gettime for delay loops (clk_id: 1, resolution: 1ns).
Found Generic flash chip "unknown SPI chip (RDID)" (0 kB, SPI) on ch341a_spi.
===
This flash part has status NOT WORKING for operations: PROBE READ ERASE WRITE
The test status of this chip may have been updated in the latest development
version of flashrom. If you are running the latest development version,
please email a report to flashrom@flashrom.org if any of the above operations
work correctly for you with this flash chip. Please include the flashrom log
file for all operations you tested (see the man page for details), and mention
which mainboard or programmer you tested in the subject line.
Thanks for your help!
No operations were specified
I have written to support on 1 August but have not heard back yet
