ESP32-S3 Not talking on USB anymore

[michalk]

The ESP32-S3-Devkitc-1 I have no longer enumerates on the native USB port. I am attempting to get my application to talk via CDC to miniterm over this native port and not the UART port. The UART port still enumerates.
I broke it after defining the following:
ARDUINO_HW_CDC_ON_BOOT=1
ARDUINO_USB_MODE=1
ARDUINO_USB_CDC_ON_BOOT=1
I can no longer flash new firmware.

Pressing the BOOT button during power on/restart doesn't fix the problem.
How low level is the USB enumeration? My Linux system doesn't show any events when I plug in the board, and I fear that it is permanently damaged. Would the JTAG port work to get it back into a usable state? Not sure how much effort I should put into recovering this board. I have more boards, but would like to know for the future what to avoid.

By the way, I finally discovered using another board that defining ARDUINO_USB_MODE=1 lets me use USBSerial, which does what I need.

[chegewara]

I am not using S3 with arduino, yet, but im pretty sure your board is fine. Options you choosed did not broke the chip, because they are not persistent and boot + reset buttons will fix it for sure. The only "option" for persistent change of USB peripheral is thru efuse.

I would suggest to change USB port, USB cable etc or just flash that board with empty sketch over UART.

[michalk]

Thanks for the reply.
It's not the cable, because a second board works fine. When I try to flash through the UART, the programmer complains, but I haven't tried my options on the flasher to try to get it to load through the UART.

[chegewara]

No matter if you can or not to flash this board windows should detect esp32 S3 and install or not proper drivers on both UART and USB port. UART with or without boot + reset and USB with boot + reset combination.

[michalk]

I'm on Linux, and have a tail on the kernel messages. There's no messages when connecting to the ESP USB connector. I do get messages when connecting to the other one labelled UART, and it correctly says it's the SILabs chip. No combination of pressing the BOOT and RESET buttons triggers a response on either connector. I may try soldering on some JTAG pins to see if I can flash it that way.

[chegewara]

I thought its windows since you mentioned flasher (app?).
So, if you can please try to connect logic analyzer to USB pins (19, 20) and again try boot + reset buttons.

[sl45sms]

Same issue here on ESP32-S3-EYE board. Until yesterday, I've seen messages from esp-who (never flash anything) via serial console, then USB just stopped working. Today, decided to actually use the board, but may somehow have physically damaged, the cable and connection never changed (i.e., it is plugged in always).
Boot/reset does not help, and also not any USB device/or event on logs, is on the list.
Otherwise, the board works fine and detects faces, listens to "hi esp" etc.

[lbernstone]

It is possible for the traces to USB to be damaged, but it is far more likely that cable that is damaged. The HWCDC is a hardware peripheral that the ROM bootloader initiates. Holding down boot while resetting should always enable it, and you should see it come up in dmesg.

[sl45sms]

@lbernstone thanks for the reply, it was the cable , somehow losing the connection, that's embarrassing, I was pretty sure it was fine and didn't check first.