6.5.3 firmware seems really broken
I have two MK4S printers. Both are on 6.4.0. Both, sadly, have been 100% idle for about three weeks since I have been attending to other matters. I haven't interacted with them at all.
This morning, both printers started sending me "printer needs attention" messages through iOS at completely random intervals - sometimes a few hours in between, sometimes a few minutes. But neither printer indicated the nature of the "needs attention" error. At most, Prusa Connect showed the occurrence of fleeting "needs attention" statuses on both printers and suggested: "Check the display of your printer for more info." But both printers were just sitting there idle with no information, or even any indication that they "needed attention" for any reason.
Eventually, I thought I'd search to see if a new firmware was available - yep, 6.5.3, just released a couple of days ago. That has to be the reason, although the current firmware *and* Prusa Connect certainly weren't helping me figure that out!
So I visited Prusa Connect and clicked the "download new firmware" button on both printers. Both downloaded it into their queue and then... did... nothing? They didn't flash and they just discarded it.
I downloaded the 6.5.3 firmware and manually transferred it to both printers. One printer stored it; the other just silently dropped it.
I clicked "Flash" on the printer that accepted it. That printer said it was starting to flash the update, and then... just... didn't. The file is gone and it's still reporting 6.4.0.
This experience reminds me of all the time that I spent in the 1990's manually downloading and installing printer drivers. I don't have a lot of nostalgia for those busywork tasks, and I don't appreciate that Prusa is making me go through this process.
The kicker is that the firmware doesn't have even a single improvement for the MK4S line. It's all CL1 and INDX stuff. Further reinforcing my belief that the MK4 line is well and truly dead to Prusa.
This is all a sad state of affairs and it moves me just a little bit closer to "upgrading" from these not-completely-dead-yet MK4S printers to... my first Bambu Lab printer.