Can the xBuddy seal be placed back?  

RE: Can the xBuddy seal be placed back?

Breaking the seal interrupts a trace. You might be able to patch the break, but it looks pretty fussy to get at near the break site.

RE: Can the xBuddy seal be placed back?

Posted by: @ssmith

Breaking the seal interrupts a trace. You might be able to patch the break, but it looks pretty fussy to get at near the break site.

Do we know for sure that the XBuddy doesn't marks itself internally as 'dirty', e.g. by some one time programming in its internal memory?

Is there any communication from Prusa in that regard?

RE: Can the xBuddy seal be placed back?

It would have to be done in the bootloader, which is AFAIR closed source.

RE: Can the xBuddy seal be placed back?

There's a bit of discussion here. That's from a while back, though. 

One of the comments states 'You can test if the "appendix" is the issue by connection BOOT0 and SWDIO to GND. That is all the appendix does.'  That sounds like something to look at for restoring the lock.

RE: Can the xBuddy seal be placed back?

I'd have to look carefully at a loose xBuddy board (I don't have one available, so there's that...). But, if the trace is on either the top or bottom layer, then instead of snapping the appendix off one might be able to scrape the solder mask off, solder on two pieces of jumper wire (30AWG wire-wrap wire would probably be the largest you want to use), cut between the two pieces of jumper wire, and put a switch at the end of the jumper wires. Open the switch when you are playing with custom firmware, and then close the switch after reverting back to Prusa firmware. If you do this on the actual appendix part itself you might have room for this rework process.

If the xBuddy board is more than 2 layers Prusa may have done the smart thing and put that jumper on an inner layer to prevent these types of shenanigans.