Librem 14: Dead/No Charge

Fair enough, Gavaudan, I don’t know the personalities involved and I’ll yield to the regulars about whether it was how I took it or not. It is perhaps my own failing that I tend to take it personally when someone provides a response that (to me) indicates they didn’t read or hear what I said previously.

You’re dealing with strangers on the internet, and for that reason I wasn’t at all surprised by your reaction. I don’t even blame you for it, but civil discourse being the rarity it is these days, I wanted to make sure you can enjoy it when it does make an appearance. Worry not, there’s no ill will here.

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Not to confuse others, PinePower USB-C port is rated up to 65W.

20×4 = 80 Watt. Anyway and as earlier and kindly noted, here is solution for 65W/0% combo:

You’re absolutely right, my bad. The PinePower is 120W total, but only 65W PD over the USB-C port.

The answer is in this thread. Hopefully your second one (like mine) works. Others have not been so lucky.

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That’s also my hope. I convinced my employer to buy me something non-standard because I believe in Purism’s mission, free software, and privacy and security. If this becomes a series of lemons I’m going to have some explaining to do to my boss…

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Update: They ended up RMAing the whole laptop. Timeline for those who care about such things:

8/6: Initial email to support (Saturday)
8/8: Initial response form support (Monday - went to spam).
8/9: RMA approved.
8/10: Shipped to Purism.
8/23: Replacement laptop shipped from Purism.
8/26: Scheduled delivery day (didn’t arrive - blame fedex)
8/27: First delivery attempt (missed by seven minutes. :P)
8/28: Successful delivery (Sunday).

So around three weeks, not too bad. The delays weren’t Purism’s fault. I wouldn’t say I was, “happy”, but the result was acceptable. Good job support team.

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Given things at work it took me a few weeks to get around to moving back in to my L14. Which then failed after a few days in exactly the same way: sitting at my desk, plugged into monitors, and using the factory-provided power supply.

I’ve shipped it back again, hoping for a diagnosis this time. One thing support suggested was that a couple of other customers saw similar behavior and that it might have something to do with having a Dell monitor plugged in via USB-C on one particular port. It’ll be interesting to see if anything comes of that.

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Got it back Friday, set it up today with a minimum number of peripherals (HDMI monitor, USB KB, unpowered USB hub, USB mouse) and it died again after less than an hour. That’s the third dead one in two months. I’m at a loss, and it sounds like Purism is, too. :confused:

I’m one of them. My problem was not battery dying though. Just that when the monitor was plugged in, whenever the laptop went to sleep, it entered a limbo state that only a forced reboot could fix. After a couple RMAs, I got a unit that works well regarding my Dell monitors. Seems there’s a bad batch.

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Please take a look at this video: Charging Librem 5 no longer works and let me know on which charging protocol you see (or rather you don’t see) there. Besides, I do enjoy bright sunny day today.

And if proprietary charging protocols still up your taste just do not even try to open related USB-DCP thread within this Forum:

Not sure what this has to do with my L14 problems since I don’t rely on USB-C charging, but thanks for bumping the topic.

Purism completed the third RMA (took a while this time), and I’ve been back online for a month or two with no additional problems, except the Qubes is now popping up the “Your battery is now charged” notification pretty frequently. I’m guessing they changed something about the charging profile, but I dunno.

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That’s fine now. And in simple words, I just wanted to warn you not to use PinePower Desktop there (while 65W USB-PD protocol, as this looks likely to me, might be of very questionable 20V negotiation, if established at all, especially when Librem 14 off and/or its battery completely discharged, and while basically here related power supply based/manufactured on top of iLEPO technically similar products, I guess).

Besides, I’m glad to hear that your Librem 14 serves you well.

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It seems that you’re putting words into his mouth. Perhaps this is a “not native speaker” issue
and that you mean that you’re glad to hear that he has his Librem 14 back and it seems to be working again.

Whatever the case, I can’t help but to point out that it reads poorly and I don’t think that all of the
downtime from having 3 RMA’s over two months should be classified as “serves you well”.

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I do admit this. Therefore, my exact point was (if not otherwise proved): “Just do not use PINEPOWER Destkop with any laptop in order to recharge its built-in battery”. There is nothing hidden there (while useless to be even tried to charge …), but if someone do not want to read carefully following non-questionable output: https://forums.puri.sm/uploads/default/original/2X/0/0bd99b882040b9039d584123f202bbcfe974ab3a.jpeg, I cannot translate everything “written” there either (and although problematic, perhaps, direct correlation to this thread topic isn’t that PinePower non-GaN power box is based on QC2.0 charging controller, 12V one, and as I do not want to even guess if WindowsOS might overcome this fact either). And please differentiate “nothing hidden” vs non-supported (when here linked USB meter output opened at all), especially if some charging protocol needs to be supported in order that battery charging functions properly.

As correlated to this thread, I do know (accordingly, as based on my own RMA experience with them) that Purism support@ Team is as tolerant toward their customers as much as they can be (investing their best time, knowledge and good will to help and provide actual/relevant repair when needed).

And therefore, very thankful to Purism RMA Team(s) as well!

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Purism | GNU+Linux | :shushing_face:

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I disagree. To require 3 RMA’s in a two month period would be a non-starter for me and there is no way that I would characterize that as a good experience. It is my understanding that Purism’s RMA procedure leaves the customer without a laptop until the repair is completed. Thus one is without a laptop during the “Mail to Purism --> repair --> Purism Mails fixed product”. For most companies I’ve dealt with, when I RMA it within the first year, they actually replace it with a new one and I mail back the broken one so that I have minimal/no downtime.

The previous poster made it clear that their issue occurred with the Purism-supplied barrel charger. Your posts in this thread about USB-PD were mostly offtopic. I’ve seen you in multiple threads barge through and ignore what the poster is saying. Let me be clear: The OP’s problem had nothing to do with USB-PD. I know you’re trying to help, but IMO it isn’t helpful at all.

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Are you looking at things here from some strategical level (from above) that doesn’t apply here? But anyway, I’m not going to even think any further about which kind of relationship you are perhaps (toward some unknown customer) trying to sell here.

And not to forget to reply to you, all I wrote in my posts here is when you use some 20V PD power supply (with additional propitiatory charging protocols and as isn’t questionable here that such “wrongly selected” power source used for extended periods of time, up to two non-adequate source/sink combos used) please make sure that those are compatible (in charging protocol standard terms, related to USB-DCP or USB-PD five voltage profiles, while five of them belong to PD3.0 standard) with Librem 14 USB-C PD input port (not just physical contacts). Here is one reliable/dedicated sample of power supply (USB-IF certified) that should work properly (out-of-the-box) with any Librem 14:


Perhaps I wrote something like: “run it, just go ahead before …” or perhaps: “think before …”, if irrelevant we will leave things here as those are (while Purism might decide, not you neither myself, to help, being favorable to them, their customer “in trouble”, help ones that are not able to push something that will not work there …, not work there as up to my guess, not work while not charging standards through USB compliant).

Indeed, thanks! Even I found good and comfortable reasons :wink: on why to catch up with the non-proprietary environment: Does RYF certification even matter.