I've yet to find a laptop mainboard that doesn't work without a battery. As I've written below, I'm getting extremely boring old office laptops with integrated graphics. Usually phones also work fine without a battery. However, I'm not touching phones because I will not fiddle with locked bootloaders and "the Android situation". Running plain Linux is a hard requirement for me.
reply> I've yet to find a laptop mainboard that doesn't work without a battery.
replyIntel MacBook Pro from 2014 works but throttles the CPU to 800 Hz making it barely usable.
The Framework laptop's motherboards can all be run without batteries. They have a 'standalone' mode you can toggle in the UEFI settings.
replyIf only Frameworks were “extremely boring old office laptops” with costs reflecting that, instead of very interesting and desirable hardware for which people will pay a slightly lower than Apple premium.
replyYeah, I really just want a refreshed early 2010s Thinkpad with a wide-open BIOS. The modern Chinese mainboards you can get for old Thinkpad chassis are very cool but the prices aren't so cool.
replyWhoa I had no idea that was a thing. Links?
replyI have a ThinkPad x230 (3rd gen i7) which makes an incredible Windows XP nostalgia device. It’s basically the newest hardware that exists with full XP drivers (other than USB3 which I don’t need) so it’s massively OP, which was the point of that project. Basically, “what if I had access to insanely futuristic hardware in 2002.”
Obviously I wouldn’t sacrifice that hardware but it might be cool to try that on yet another laptop. (Hey, I don’t have a laptop collecting problem!)
Have you guys had any experience or luck adapting Framework motherboards to run on Thinkpads? I’ve thought of doing this side project several times for my old Thinkpad x201.
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replyI'm just looking at an old Dell laptop refusing to boot without manual intervention because it looses its time setting since I removed its main battery. If I can fix that it'll become a very capable server for my home setup. Not sure it'll work though, as the bios can't be configured to ignore the time reset.
replyAll old office laptops I had so far still had the good old CMOS/RTC battery... So if indeed the RTC is solely powered by the main battery, I would guess there's at least a backup capacitor somewhere so that it survives at least a short disconnect? If you can find that one, you can probably connect power there, but that's just me guessing...
replyIt’s also possible that the laptop has a CMOS battery that is now dead.
replythere's an RTC indeed, I'll look further, thanks for the hint!
replyIf you can limit the battery to stay in the area between 40-60%, it'll last a very, very long time.
reply> but do old phones
replythey did, with modifications
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