Recovering a Bricked UM3/S3/S5

[gr5 2,265]

 S5, Um3 both have the same Olimex board.

 

Regarding ABS sticking.  Read this post or watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t58-WTxDy-k

 

https://community.ultimaker.com/topic/39949-problem-with-bending-and-adhesion/?do=findComment&comment=304704

 

[SCA_B 10]

On 11/18/2021 at 4:37 AM, gr5 said:

You should get the serial cable f - you can get at the logs and so much more.  And you can check if it thinks it's an extended or not.  And you can enable the sshd (ssh daemon) and much much more).

 

Read gr5.org/unbricking/

 

 

I have the following boards on my UM3, no HDMI so I think I go and get a serial cable but where to plug it in?
I can't find a RX  pin on neither board- could you point me in the right direction if you could please?

[gr5 2,265]

I have an older UM3 with older unix board made by Olimex so I don't know the answers to your questions.  There have been supply chain issues and I assume olimex stopped supplying ultimaker with their boards and so Ultimaker had to scramble and come up with an alternate solution.  It looks to me like they designed this board themselves.  Maybe.

 

I strongly suspect your flash memory has a few bad blocks and needs to be repartitioned and reformatted but I don't know for sure.  I'd definitely take things apart and look at the other side of that red board.  Maybe an hdmi port or serial pins on the other side.

 

Personally, I don't have much money/budget to fix my UM3 and S5 so in my particular situation, I would take it off (the red board) and look all over for serial connection pins.  They would likely be labelled RX TX G if they exist.  If not you almost certainly need to replace the red board. 

 

Is your printer still under warranty?  Is this a company printer?

 

 

 

 

[SCA_B 10]

I think I found the serial pins and ordered a serial to USB cable. 
It's out of warranty- I try to reformat the flash memory before buying a new board.

[gr5 2,265]

Great.  If nothing else the errors on boot will tell you a lot!

[CarloK 205]

On 7/13/2023 at 1:13 PM, gr5 said:

There have been supply chain issues and I assume olimex stopped supplying ultimaker with their boards and so Ultimaker had to scramble and come up with an alternate solution.  It looks to me like they designed this board themselves.  Maybe.

I don't remember any supply chain issues, do you refer to the world wide supply chain issues created by Covid? That was long after the UM3 production ended.

 

Olimex always provided the Linux board for the UM3 and the S5 mark I. Since Ultimaker bought large quantities of the board, Olimaker created a special variation of the original Lime2 board with different USB connectors, another type of memory chip (NAND flash instead of NOR) and some cost reductions by removing components not used in the UM3 (that's how the HDMI connector got removed).

The connector for the serial port are the 3 bare pins next to the ethernet connector.

[gr5 2,265]

Thanks for the correction.

 

I was told by a reseller that the Olimex isn't used anymore in the S5 and it's "some other computer".  I haven't seen any posts with photos showing the non-olimex S5s.  The reseller could be wrong.  I assumed the latest UM3s also would have the newer (non-existant?) computer.

 

Or maybe the reseller was talking about the S3?

 

My memory can be a bit sloppy.  I try to take notes about these kinds of details all into a single file (easy to find stuff with search) but sometimes I make mistakes.  If the user on the forum sticks with it long enough we always get to the truth.

[gr5 2,265]

@CarloK - two people with UM3 printers (SCA_B above was one of them) got their printers working again by installing the 4.3.3 version of firmware (using uSD firmware recovery) and then the 5.3.0 version (versions from memory but I think it's correct - you can find the thread by clicking on SCA_B's profile and looking at his recent posts).

 

This helped both of them!  The other one showed me his log and he had block errors on mmcblk1p2.  It wouldn't mount so the copy step failed.  Trying 5.3.0 alone (many times) didn't help - it kept failing when mounting.

 

1) At least for S5, I thought you told me that 5.3.0 recovery procedure repartitions and reformats?  Or at least reformats the partitions?

2) Why did installing 4.3.3 fix it?  I thought 4.3.3 didn't do partition or reformatting?

 

My guess: 4.X and 5.X both repartition but only if the partitions are the wrong size (not if there is an error with the mounting command).  If I remember right 5.X has a larger partition for p1 (and therefore smaller for p2).

 

There are boot log outputs (from serial cable) over on that other thread.

[CarloK 205]

@gr5 The UM3 always used the Olimex Lime2 board
The S5 printer received the same board, but in 2020 new regulations became effective and the Olimex board did not comply to this, neither was Olimex prepared to make it compatible to those regulations. That's why the S5 printer got a silent upgrade  with a new processor SOM. Read here more about the differences between the S5 R1 and S5 R2.

The S3 printer was always produced with the same new SOM as in the S5 R2.

[gr5 2,265]

Thanks for the info.  What about my questions 1 and 2 above.

[CarloK 205]

@gr5 I'm no longer working for Ultimaker, so this is mostly from memory:
In 5.3.0 the partition sizes changed. The recovery image searches for partitions of the types ext4 and FSFS and tries to change their sizes. When no such partition types are found, it reformats the internal memory. 

Problem here is that a damaged Flash memory still might be recognized as being the expected partition type and/or size, so no reformatting is done.

 

In the S5 we fixed this by always reformatting, instead of trying to preserve data. Too bad, this fix never made it into a new UM3 release.  ;-(

 

A work around is to have the UM3's Flash memory to be configured in another way than the ext4 / FSFS partitions, which the recovery script is looking for. For example, erase the internal memory, or use an older UM3 release with a different setup. Apparently the 4.3.3 release you used is old enough to trigger the reformat procedure when using the v5.3.0 recovery installer.

[gr5 2,265]

Oh - so another fix would be to just remove all the partitions or make one big partition or change the partition sizes.  That's much easier than formatting as the format utility needs to be downloaded over the internet (couldn't figure out how to call f2fs in the ultimaker repair firmware and it's not in the olimex jessie image either).

[CarloK 205]

Something along those lines, yes. I wouldn't recommend changing the partition sizes, as then the script will try to change sizes instead of re-formatting. 

 

The script uses sfdisk for partitioning and formats using mkfs.ext4 (boot partition) and mkfs.f2fs (all other partitions).

[gr5 2,265]

The problem is that many of these people have corrupted blocks as part of the formatting data (not sure what those blocks are called) , or partition data (I think it's called the partition table) and need to reformat.  Because the partition itself or the formatting itself has bad blocks. 

 

So changing partition sizes is great because hopefully it forces a repartition and also a formatting.  For people with this particular issue.  If the bad blocks are only in regular files then no formatting is needed.  Just reinstall the firmware.

 

Fortunately the flash drive can detect bad blocks and automatically remaps them.  Unfortunately it doesn't know what the data used to say so the data in the newly mapped block is corrupt (or probably all zeros? still corrupt).

[swepett 2]

On 7/13/2023 at 4:15 PM, SCA_B said:

I think I found the serial pins and ordered a serial to USB cable. 
It's out of warranty- I try to reformat the flash memory before buying a new board.

 

Where did you find them? My printer looks the same sa your, except that I have a HDMI port, but I can't find the serial pins.

[CarloK2 9]

On 9/2/2024 at 4:42 PM, swepett said:

 

Where did you find them? My printer looks the same sa your, except that I have a HDMI port, but I can't find the serial pins.

 

From left to right, the pins are: Tx, Rx and ground (also marked on the PCB).

[swepett 2]

15 hours ago, CarloK2 said:

 

From left to right, the pins are: Tx, Rx and ground (also marked on the PCB).

Here is my card. What do I need to remove or where do I find the pins? Thanks. 

[CarloK2 9]

I can see the 3 pins clearly in your picture.
Do not disconnect anything! No need to do so, and you might disconnect an important connector.

Since you were unable to find the 3 pins, it's best to find someone else to fix your printer. This was the easy step. In the next steps you will break something if you don't know what you are doing and create much higher repair costs.

[swepett 2]

33 minutes ago, CarloK2 said:

I can see the 3 pins clearly in your picture.
Do not disconnect anything! No need to do so, and you might disconnect an important connector.

Since you were unable to find the 3 pins, it's best to find someone else to fix your printer. This was the easy step. In the next steps you will break something if you don't know what you are doing and create much higher repair costs.

Thanks for your confidence. 🙂 I've done harder things before but I am apparently blind because I can still not see the pins. Does it hurt pointing them out once more? I would really appreciate that.

[CarloK2 9]

I feel like being trolled, but here you go:

 

Your picture looks a bit different from mine because yours has two PCBs stacked on top of each other (the top one is missing from my picture)

Edited September 17 by CarloK2

[swepett 2]

20 minutes ago, CarloK2 said:

Your picture looks a bit different from mine because yours has two PCBs stacked on top of each other (the top one is missing from my picture)

This. That was what I thought and that's why I started disassembling the boards because I figured something was hiding under there. You can say what you want, but I still think it is hard to see those pins 🙂

 

Huge thanks! I thought I was going insane but now I finally know where the pins are. I am not trolling, I am obviously just blind at the moment. 🙂