Brand new Ultimaker S5 stuck at start-up with a screen reading "U-Boot 2016.05-ultimaker-00017-g68..."

[ElinD 0]

Hi all!

 

This morning, I got a startup screen which looks like the attached image and says:

"U-Boot 2016.05-ultimaker-00017-g68b3b1c (Apr 09 2018 - 14:28:14 *0200) Allwinner Technolo....U-Boot 2016.05-ultimaker-00017-g68b3b1c (Apr 09 2018 - 14:28:14 *0200) Allwinner Technolo....". And after that I can't read anymore because the text continues off screen.

 

We have had the printer for a week and run 5 successful PLA print with only the AA core. We have not used the printer in developer mode. We have only printed with PLA so far. The longest print it has done is ca 4 hours.

 

The last thing I did to it yesterday was finishing a small print (40min), pressing "Confirm print removal" and turning it off. Removing the print afterwards. The only thing that I can think of which I might have done incorrectly is doing the actions too quickly and the last ones in the wrong order. I usually let the printer cool down for 15 min before removing the print. Please let me know if you guys think these actions might have caused the presumable firmware issue and I will be less hasty next time.

 

The startup will not continue after this. I tried restarting it and waiting for 20 minutes. I tried re-attaching the power cable and the Internet cable. I've tried turning it on with the original USB in it and without (read a forum post about that helping). I've also read this and am thus not trying the re-flash:

 

 

And sent an email to the company which we bought it from to receive support, still waiting for an answer.

 

I'm posting here to that people in the future will receive an answer to this problem, and it would also be great if anyone on this forum knew about a fix I can perform and not have to send the printer away to be repaired/firmware recovered for at least a week. I'll keep the post updated and write an answer in it if I receive one outside of the forum.

 

Oh and by the way, if you buy the US5 in Sweden, make sure to save the box and everything it came in! The official supporter in Sweden just told me that if we send the printer to them for repair without the original box, they cannot guarantee that it will survive the shipping. Which seems logical enough, but most people don't save the boxes. So, keep the cardboard if you ever need to send it for repair.

 

Thank you all very much!

 

Best

Elin

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ElinD 0]

Hi again all!

 

For future record for future people with this problem, the following information could be good to know:

 

-You should not open the Ultimaker S5 yourself and do a firmware recovery. You need to ship it to Ultimaker's official support (we only have one in Sweden) an get it repaired. If it breaks after the warranty period, I'm not sure what you should do. Maybe buy the U3 instead so that at least it's not dangerous for you to open it? 

 

-There seems to be no other way to fix this specific issue than a firmware recovery. Please Ultimaker, make that possible through the USB-port... That would make these specific problems easier to solve for the common user. From what I've read on the forum, one reason for our stuck-at-boot-problem could be a buggy update. 

 

Have a great day everyone!

 

/E

[gr5 2,224]

So the information above has changed.  There is now a way to do a firmware recovery yourself.  Initially it was deemed too dangerous (deadly voltages under the printer) but now the consumer can do it himself if they follow specific instructions.  Contact your reseller.  I got the same error as above but firmware recovery did not fix it.

 

"U-Boot" is similar to "BIOS" (e.g. "AMIBIOS").  The UM3, S3, S5 have a tiny cell-phone-like linux computer in them (dual core!) that when powered off starts with the U-Boot which then immediately boots from the Flash memory (Flash memory is the same as a solid state hard drive).  Anyway the U-Boot searches the partitions in flash for one with a boot file.  But in your case the boot partition is corrupted because it couldn't find it.

 

On my computer the partition was so badly corrupted it needed reformatting and even a "firmware recovery" couldn't handle it.  In fact all 3 partitions on my S5 were corrupted.  One day the printer was printing fine, the next day, I had this.

 

Anyway, if you get this error showing U-Boot, then you probably need a new linux board from your reseller.

[RudydG 62]

On 8/10/2020 at 3:29 PM, gr5 said:

So the information above has changed.  There is now a way to do a firmware recovery yourself.  Initially it was deemed too dangerous (deadly voltages under the printer) but now the consumer can do it himself if they follow specific instructions.  Contact your reseller.  I got the same error as above but firmware recovery did not fix it.

 

"U-Boot" is similar to "BIOS" (e.g. "AMIBIOS").  The UM3, S3, S5 have a tiny cell-phone-like linux computer in them (dual core!) that when powered off starts with the U-Boot which then immediately boots from the Flash memory (Flash memory is the same as a solid state hard drive).  Anyway the U-Boot searches the partitions in flash for one with a boot file.  But in your case the boot partition is corrupted because it couldn't find it.

 

On my computer the partition was so badly corrupted it needed reformatting and even a "firmware recovery" couldn't handle it.  In fact all 3 partitions on my S5 were corrupted.  One day the printer was printing fine, the next day, I had this.

 

Anyway, if you get this error showing U-Boot, then you probably need a new linux board from your reseller.

 

Edited January 27, 2021 by RudydG

[kd24911 0]

I am facing the same problem today with my Ultimaker S5 😞

 

Team please help. I am in Singapore and bought this printer Apr'20 from authorised retailer here in SG.

[SandervG 1,521]

Hello, please see this comment: 

 

[anti 1]

We had the same problem wit our exactly 2 year old S5, our retailer sent us a link to ultimaker-repair instructions, which are aimed at "professionals", because of some potentially deadly high voltage under the cover.

So we followed the instructions, but unfortunately the provided "restore"-Image wasn't recognized by the printer/controller board (tried multiple sd-cards and different variants to flash the image).

Did some google-research, and somewhere in the forums a link to an older recovery-firmware was found. Copied the image to an sd-card and the bootloader instantly recognized the card and did a complete recovery from the card. After that it was easy to upgrade to the actual 6.1 firmware per USB-stick.

So basically you should contact your retailer, get some repair instructions after admitting you know what to do, and if this doesn't work, send the printer back or come back here.

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi @anti, thank you for your message and welcome to the community. Glad you managed to find a recovery image that worked. If you found an older img that worked, your method was probably fine. Could you share with me via DM what the instructions were you received and which img? That way I can check if you received correct instructions. I would curious to know why the instructions didn't work for you. (But happy that you found your way!)

 

Have a great day,

[gr5 2,224]

@anti - can you let me know what version the image was that did and didn't work?  Also do you have an S5 R1 or R2?

[anti 1]

@gr5 the non-working image was "um-restore-5.7.2-R1.img", the image which worked was "recovery-5.2.11.2019´0503.img" (maybe there's a difference between restore and recovery)

[anti 1]

And for the support: If the bootloader doesn't find the image because of file-system corruption, it does wait for an image provided by tftp - this would be a much safer option to recover a bricked printer, without the need for opening the printer.

[gr5 2,224]

INTERESTING!  I also had trouble with 5.7.2.  Maybe there is a mistake in that recovery image.

[anti 1]

As our S5 got stuck again, probably after a power cycle, and i need to flash it again:

Could someone please provide an actual recovery image for the first generation S5?

[gr5 2,224]

You should contact your reseller as they can give you links to the latest images but I have links to a couple old ones here plus detailed instructions on how to deal with an Ultimaker S5/S3/UM3 that won't boot:

 

gr5.org/unbricking/