Preventive eMMC replacement on MCU1

[Plainfittsu]

Not much interested in the car talking to Tesla as its a salvage car with no warranty. They were sending updates that are not improving things.
Only interested in getting up and running with new emac and rooting to enable CCS charging which gets disabled when the shut off the supercharging for unsupported cars.

chip is in the freezer for the night, you never know.

any assistance would be welcome

 

[scaesare]

Not much interested in the car talking to Tesla as its a salvage car with no warranty. They were sending updates that are not improving things.
Only interested in getting up and running with new emac and rooting to enable CCS charging which gets disabled when the shut off the supercharging for unsupported cars.

chip is in the freezer for the night, you never know.

any assistance would be welcome

I wouldn't hesitate to try the cycle a coupe of times. I got the the individual partitions to show up only after the 2nd or 3rd go round.

 

[TESLIFT]

In the US you have a legal right to get your old part back. I don't know what the law is in Canada.

In Canada too. At least in Quebec that is the law. If you ask before they start, you get your old piece. So whenever I’ll get big issues, I’ll do it in Quebec, not Ontario so I get my property back!

 

[scaesare]

GOOD:

I've now been able to read my entire original eMMC chip. Both the entire 8GB block volume, as well as all four individual partitions. No freezing necessary for the last 3 extractions.


UNGOOD:

Had chip soldered back in today, reinstalled MCU. No boot.

The guy at the shop said the new Swissbit chip was physically smaller than the Hynix that came out, making it harder to eyeball alignment on the silkscreened board lines. He also said the Swissbit came with lead-free solder whish requires more heat, and he wasn't happy first go-round so he pulled it and cleaned/re-balled with leaded solder and re-attached.

So I'm unsure if I have a bad image on the chip, the chip isn't soldered completely, or high heat fried the chip.


Plans:

1- Compare the boot partitions I have on the new chip with the old and make sure I don't have a mismatch

2- Pull the MCU back apart and re-seat everything, and double check cabling

3- Take the card back to microsoldering shop and have them pull it. Bring laptop and reader with me and verify image on chip is still good. Re-write if needed. Re-solder if good and try again. (May try and take power supply to boot up there)

Sigh... so close.

 

[KLuuppo]

I found the same issue with aligning new chips. Silkscreen marking on the board is for some other chip. I took some kapton tape, aligned bga edge with tape edge, marked the chip on the tape. Then stuck the tape on board aligning the edge again with pads. Cut tape on markings. Rinse and repeat for all four edges. If I ever get to do this again, I'm sure to scratch chip edge on the board before removal.

One of my solderings had also just sticked with flux. It dropped right off when cleaning. The board had been on the edge of the preheater, which likely left it cold.

By the way, if one is bench-powering the MCU, which pins need to have power? I tried to feed the obvious +12V pins, but it didn't work.

 

[JamesMc]

As a new owner of a second-hand Tesla S with still some warranty on it... Would it make sense to find someone that bricks the eMMC during the end of the warranty? Would that even be possible without it being detectable? If enough people start doing this "preventive bricking" during warranty, Tesla might step up and finally fix their software..

 

[scaesare]

I found the same issue with aligning new chips. Silkscreen marking on the board is for some other chip. I took some kapton tape, aligned bga edge with tape edge, marked the chip on the tape. Then stuck the tape on board aligning the edge again with pads. Cut tape on markings. Rinse and repeat for all four edges. If I ever get to do this again, I'm sure to scratch chip edge on the board before removal.

One of my solderings had also just sticked with flux. It dropped right off when cleaning. The board had been on the edge of the preheater, which likely left it cold.

By the way, if one is bench-powering the MCU, which pins need to have power? I tried to feed the obvious +12V pins, but it didn't work.

Oh, thanks... I'll make some suggestions to my guy at his shop for that...

 

[LuckyLuke]

By the way, if one is bench-powering the MCU, which pins need to have power? I tried to feed the obvious +12V pins, but it didn't work.

Bench info here: Lunars/tesla

 

[Plainfittsu]

Word of caution any one buying a cheap solder station, burnt Daughter board with thermal runaway with solder iron




Post damage check on tip glowing red at 80C, had done one pass at 260C all ok went ok applied additional flux iron on to board then fizz,
working under magnifier had not noticed the thing was white hot. Only dared to put it to 80C for pic.

Any one have a spare board. probably have more chance catching a unicorn

 

[scaesare]

Ouch... sorry...

 

[scaesare]

It Lives!

Gotta give @LuckyLuke a big thank you for his help on this...

 

[tga]

Oh, thanks... I'll make some suggestions to my guy at his shop for that...

Care to recommend the shop that did the solder work?

 

[scaesare]

Care to recommend the shop that did the solder work?

So he mentioned being wary of a job like this again because of the difficulty in testing it on the bench before it leaves the shop. This was my attempt to do so:

I'll see if he's ok with me giving out a reference. It is down here in the Northern VA area, however...

 

[KLuuppo]

Any one have a spare board. probably have more chance catching a unicorn

Does IC and MCU need to have the same firmware version? Spansion and eMMC need to match anyway.

It Lives!

Yeah!

 

[Gen_OV]

IC and MCU must have same version to run correctly

 

[G8YTZ]

Hi! my Jan 2016 (Oct. 2015 build) MS had a near-death experience a few days ago. MCU would not come to life for about 3 hours, it did burst back, but without LTE for about half a day until the SC dialled in (over WI-Fi) and fixed this. They re-sent the s/w update 209.32.1 and that seems to have installed ok.

When I raised the issue of potential eMMC failure the SC told me that my car has a plug-in eMMC chip, is that right, did Tesla change later MCU 1's? Is a swap out a fairly straightforward process that the SC could do? My background is in electronics, I am a radio ham too, but the thought of de-soldering and re-soldering this chip is more than my close-up eyesight could manage nowadays, besides which I don't have the equipment.

The car is out of warranty on mileage (now at 120k miles). Be grateful for some guidance here.

 

[G8YTZ]

Hi! Happened to mine S here in Norway, 4 years old and 235k km. Replacing yourself the eMMC is not easy at all and bears the risk to damage more than it is. Tesla checked the logs (online) and told me it happened during FW update. Probably that's the reason replacement was a goodwill from Tesla A great service! Yes, can be a big issue in a cold winter.

Has the same thing on my car with same response from the SC 2019.32.1 was the last update too.

 

[.jg.]

...MCU would not come to life for about 3 hours, it did burst back, but without LTE for about half a day....

My MCU started doing this in the three weeks before it failed completely and was replaced under warranty. The MCU needed to be reset fairly often and it would take from one to three hours to bootup, with different functions not working each time. I reckon it was doing file system checks at boot on partitions on the failing eMMC.

 

[T.R.T.e.s.l.a.]

It Lives!

View attachment 454412

Gotta give @LuckyLuke a big thank you for his help on this...

Awesome! Congrats.
I plan to do the same right after my extended warranty expires.
Or... If i'm luck my MCU dies before that. Hahaha

 

[Guvnah]

When I raised the issue of potential eMMC failure the SC told me that my car has a plug-in eMMC chip, is that right, did Tesla change later MCU 1's? Is a swap out a fairly straightforward process that the SC could do? My background is in electronics, I am a radio ham too, but the thought of de-soldering and re-soldering this chip is more than my close-up eyesight could manage nowadays, besides which I don't have the equipment.

I hope that what Service Center told you about a plug-in eMMc chip is an indication of a change Tesla had done! I had my MCU replaced last year after eMMc death so I am hoping the MCU replacement I received was a later iteration with a plug-in addition. But I understand it's still a glaring programming oversight that has remained unchanged but with newer Teslas there are higher capacity chips.