Wiki Consolidated eMMC Thread (MCU repair) (Black Center Screen)

[appleguru]

I wonder if they applied the same logic to the Model Y customer whose roof flew off- just don't drive faster than 10mph, your roof will kinda stay on.

If anyone is curious, here’s the actual wording used:

And yes, I’ve tried several USB sticks. Doesn’t make a difference.

Made a follow up appointment and was told:

Our team had identified the issue related to you MCU due to /tmp directory is filling up due to a regression with dashcam. There has been improvements with version 2020.36.11 with a future firmware fix to come. At this time I will close this visit.

Really not sure of the best way to proceed here given that I am almost at the end of my warranty... but it’s definitely an issue that needs to get resolved :-/ I could take out my MCU and replace the emmc myself, or even upgrade to MCU2 myself (I have a spare...), but... I shouldn’t have to. The car is under warranty!

Even my wife is complaining at this point :-/

 

[HankLloydRight]

Even my wife is complaining at this point :-/

Have you tried rebooting the wife?

 

[dark cloud]

I could take out my MCU and replace the emmc myself, or even upgrade to MCU2 myself (I have a spare...), but... I shouldn’t have to. The car is under warranty!
]

I’m with ya, that is poor customer service. “The car works fine if you don’t use some of the car’s features-no problem” doesn’t cut it.

Do you think they are aware of the above? Do you think there is any notes on your file that you are one of the guys who fixes these? not that it should matter..

 

[whitex]

If anyone is curious, here’s the actual wording used:
View attachment 602117

And yes, I’ve tried several USB sticks. Doesn’t make a difference.

Made a follow up appointment and was told:


Really not sure of the best way to proceed here given that I am almost at the end of my warranty... but it’s definitely an issue that needs to get resolved :-/ I could take out my MCU and replace the emmc myself, or even upgrade to MCU2 myself (I have a spare...), but... I shouldn’t have to. The car is under warranty!

Even my wife is complaining at this point :-/

View attachment 602120

Out of curiosity, did if they can recommend a USB drive which works?

As for the issue with /tmp, they will just tell you do factory reset since theoretically it would have the same effect as replacing the MCU (or the Tegra board).

All that said, there will always be issues with Tesla bugs, combined with the fact that MCU1 is a legacy support pain Tesla doesn't want but is stuck with. I have replaced emmc on my car (post warranty, "slow" or "randomly rebooting" MCU did not qualify my car for a fix before warranty expired), and yet few weeks ago I noticed that if I park my car for few days straight, my IC would start reporting MCU not working, even though it seemed to be working just fine, and when I go to reboot, it would take a long time to even start rebooting, then a long time with black screen, but once I heard it power off the HVAC, it would boot fast as usual. Then a software update fixed it, haven't seen it happen since the update. Now I'm contemplating whether to accept and new updates, as the car seems to be working ok. I'm not worried about emmc, since the one I put in is an overkill (32GB pSLC Swissbit EM-26, with only the originally sized 8GB image and the remainder of the space trimmed, therefore free for wear leveling). I am however increasingly worried about bugs which Tesla might introduce in a future update, given the fact that their engineering efforts are prioritized for MCU2.

Tesla has been described by many as a computer on wheels. Owning a few years old Tesla is exactly like owning a computer of the same age - the manufacturer does the absolute minimum required to support it and would much rather you just buy a new one.

 

[appleguru]

Out of curiosity, did if they can recommend a USB drive which works?

As for the issue with /tmp, they will just tell you do factory reset since theoretically it would have the same effect as replacing the MCU (or the Tegra board).

they did not. In fact, they said they didn’t even have a “known good” one at the SC to try.

RE factory reset, they did that already (which unsurprisingly actually made a huge improvement). Things are still horrendously broken though, and I agree, MCU1 just isn’t a priority from a SW dev perspective. Since MCU2/ICE came out and the UI was optimized for it, the MCU1 experience has gotten dramatically worse.

 

[Rockster]

Here's a shout out to @TonyT for his excellent eMMC repair work. I removed my MCU1 due to flaky behavior that suggested another pending failure (60k miles after the last replacement, that one under warranty) and sent the Terga board to TonyT who did his magic and returned the card. This past weekend I pulled the MCU back out, plunked in the newly worked Terga card, reinstalled the MCU and the car is as happy as a clam. So far not one bit of flaky or sluggish behavior. It definitely seems more responsive than before. Thanks, TonyT!!!

(As an aside, I also took this opportunity to replace the 12v battery. That was far more annoying and painful than removing and reinstalling the MCU. I'll never replace a 12v myself again. What a PITA.)

 

[CuriousG]

So Tesla is now offering to replace just the daughterboard rather than the whole MCU for a much reduced price? !@#$#@$!! Anybody have any luck getting a refund for Tesla unnecessarily raping me for replacement MCU and 12V battery that IMO wasn't needed?

 

[rltsx]

One more data point:

2017 MX 67K miles. Got the black screen. Made appointment on app at first it was 3 weeks out, tried again later that evening and looks like someone canceled an I was able to get in next morning to Buena Park. I did my research so it was easy communicating with my SA about the symptoms and likely daughterboard replacement etc. Got a call in the afternoon and was told yep needs daughterboard and they have the parts. Picked up the car that evening $410 OTD.

So $400 and 24 hours later I was back on the road, best Tesla service experience so far in my ownership.

 

[BigNick]

Tesla has been described by many as a computer on wheels. Owning a few years old Tesla is exactly like owning a computer of the same age - the manufacturer does the absolute minimum required to support it and would much rather you just buy a new one.

Wait until MCU2 becomes legacy in about three years or so. If Tesla thinks dealing with about 200K old MCU1 cars is a pain now, they're in for a real shocker with all the 3s and Ys.

Also my main computer that I"m using now is an 8-year-old Dell Precision workstation tower. It's actually easier to deal with than many new computers. Easy to upgrade and very well built.

 

[tomas]

Wait until MCU2 becomes legacy in about three years or so. If Tesla thinks dealing with about 200K old MCU1 cars is a pain now, they're in for a real shocker with all the 3s and Ys.

Also my main computer that I"m using now is an 8-year-old Dell Precision workstation tower. It's actually easier to deal with than many new computers. Easy to upgrade and very well built.

Very doubtful they will offer upgrade path. Any MCU 3 would probably be tied to model year and repricing. They are beginning to realize the value of clear cutoffs.

 

[whitex]

Wait until MCU2 becomes legacy in about three years or so. If Tesla thinks dealing with about 200K old MCU1 cars is a pain now, they're in for a real shocker with all the 3s and Ys.

Also my main computer that I"m using now is an 8-year-old Dell Precision workstation tower. It's actually easier to deal with than many new computers. Easy to upgrade and very well built.

Because for your Dell computer you have a choice to install whatever you want on it (I bet it would run different versions of Windows or Linux if you wanted), while Tesla computer is a closed system with mandatory upgrades and no rollbacks. If you run old software on your PC and it crashes or get hacked because of it, you won't be able to put the blame on Dell. With Tesla on the other hand, they would get blamed if that happened, so they don't let you.

But, it's a problem Elon will deal with only when it happens and only if he has to. It would not be unprecedented for Tesla to just drop support for things, try to buy parts for the plus suspension for example, or executive seats, or some other obsoleted parts no longer under warranty. I would not be surprised if MCU1 parts became unavailable as soon as last MCU1 falls out of warranty coverage - the saving grace is that Tesla used to sell CPO's with 4 year warranty which leaves some MCU1 cars with warranty till 2024 (rather than 2022 - 4 years after introduction of MCU2). Notice that they no longer do that, CPO warranty was reduced to a year, so MCU2 will likely have a shorter support span after it's discontinued.

 

[BigNick]

Because for your Dell computer you have a choice to install whatever you want on it (I bet it would run different versions of Windows or Linux if you wanted), while Tesla computer is a closed system with mandatory upgrades and no rollbacks. If you run old software on your PC and it crashes or get hacked because of it, you won't be able to put the blame on Dell. With Tesla on the other hand, they would get blamed if that happened, so they don't let you.

But, it's a problem Elon will deal with only when it happens and only if he has to. It would not be unprecedented for Tesla to just drop support for things, try to buy parts for the plus suspension for example, or executive seats, or some other obsoleted parts no longer under warranty. I would not be surprised if MCU1 parts became unavailable as soon as last MCU1 falls out of warranty coverage - the saving grace is that Tesla used to sell CPO's with 4 year warranty which leaves some MCU1 cars with warranty till 2024 (rather than 2022 - 4 years after introduction of MCU2). Notice that they no longer do that, CPO warranty was reduced to a year, so MCU2 will likely have a shorter support span after it's discontinued.

I run Ubuntu on it. Any Windows software I need is run in a VM only.

Back to Tesla: I hold out hope that the aftermarket will eventually provide support for the older cars. “OpenBMS” or similarly-named open-source firmware that anyone can use and/or contribute towards.

Maybe as a two-decade-plus user of various Linux and BSD distributions (starting with RedHat 5.2 in 1998), I am too optimistic about such a goal. After all there are hundreds of millions of old computers that can run Linux but there would be far less than 0.1% of cars that could run an OpenBMS or similar.

 

[whitex]

I run Ubuntu on it. Any Windows software I need is run in a VM only.

Back to Tesla: I hold out hope that the aftermarket will eventually provide support for the older cars. “OpenBMS” or similarly-named open-source firmware that anyone can use and/or contribute towards.

Maybe as a two-decade-plus user of various Linux and BSD distributions (starting with RedHat 5.2 in 1998), I am too optimistic about such a goal. After all there are hundreds of millions of old computers that can run Linux but there would be far less than 0.1% of cars that could run an OpenBMS or similar.

Open source software is not going to happen for things like the BMS. Tesla will lock it down for liability reasons, so you cause some kind of a disaster, like burn down someone's home or office building because you wrote your own battery management algorithm. I suspect this will get legislated at some point too, to prevent people doing stupid things - no different than making it illegal to store large amounts of rocket fuel in your basement. You wouldn't want to live near a nuclear plant running FreeReactor or OpenChernobyl software pulled from git, would you? I know I'd rather there was some big company behind the software with deep pockets which can be targeted if anything goes wrong.

 

[FlatSix911]

So Tesla is now offering to replace just the daughterboard rather than the whole MCU for a much reduced price? !@#$#@$!! Anybody have any luck getting a refund for Tesla unnecessarily raping me for replacement MCU and 12V battery that IMO wasn't needed?

What did you pay for the replacement before the price reduction? It may be worth asking your local service manager.

 

[HankLloydRight]

. You wouldn't want to live near a nuclear plant running FreeReactor or OpenChernobyl software pulled from git, would you?

Post of the Month!

 

[jeremy0916]

Man being a 2015 90D owner(bought used at 23k miles this year and I have only increased it to 28k miles so far) and seeing all these threads on MCU problems and how Tesla early on had a software bug that caused fast degradation of our hardware units due to overused logging is off putting. I realize there is an investigation ongoing into it too, which if won sounds like Tesla would need to do these upgrades or a full MCU replacement on their dime. I am holding out for the results of that if I can because 40k for me to drop on a used Tesla was already a large amount of money for me, $2,500 for MCU2 is just a slap in the face. Luckily my Tesla rarely boots up too slowly and so far I have only had my center screen and left side menu go black once driving, but it was while going down the highway and autopilot had been engaged at that time and I had to take control. Its freaking scary at 70 miles an hour as a first time thing having that happen and losing all nav and such. Honestly the kinda event that could startle and kill someone if they are not careful. Tesla should be handling such a problem. I have only had that crazy glitch happen once but I fear it will happen again or get worse since I have one of the "bad" MCU1 units that will probably die after I use this car awhile longer.

 

[FlatSix911]

Man being a 2015 90D owner(bought used at 23k miles this year and I have only increased it to 28k miles so far) and seeing all these threads on MCU problems and how Tesla early on had a software bug that caused fast degradation of our hardware units due to overused logging is off putting. I realize there is an investigation ongoing into it too, which if won sounds like Tesla would need to do these upgrades or a full MCU replacement on their dime.

I am holding out for the results of that if I can because 40k for me to drop on a used Tesla was already a large amount of money for me, $2,500 for MCU2 is just a slap in the face. Luckily my Tesla rarely boots up too slowly and so far I have only had my center screen and left side menu go black once driving, but it was while going down the highway and autopilot had been engaged at that time and I had to take control. Its freaking scary at 70 miles an hour as a first time thing having that happen and losing all nav and such. Honestly the kinda event that could startle and kill someone if they are not careful. Tesla should be handling such a problem. I have only had that crazy glitch happen once but I fear it will happen again or get worse since I have one of the "bad" MCU1 units that will probably die after I use this car awhile longer.

I agree and think the NHTSA investigation will eventually force Tesla to issue a recall notice for replacement on their dime.

 

[Zuikkis]

Interesting information from a friend of mine. He visited SC to install gen3 door handle. While doing the necessary firmware upgrade, the mechanic had said that "Oh you have 3rd party memory, it might interfere with future upgrades".

So apparently current Tesla software does check the emmc type and pops up a notify if a non-standard emmc is detected? I doubt it really can affect anything, unless they start blacklisting them..

 

[BigNick]

The manufacturer of the Flash chip shouldn't matter as long as the chip conforms to industry standards, but we've seen how poorly some thumb drives work with the media player.
Sounds like a typical Tesla SC excuse, though.

 

[Zuikkis]

The manufacturer of the Flash chip shouldn't matter as long as the chip conforms to industry standards, but we've seen how poorly some thumb drives work with the media player.
Sounds like a typical Tesla SC excuse, though.

Well. Having non-standard eMMC gives a hint that the car might be rooted. That's probably why they are suspicious.