Custom builds with modified pins/timers crashing on start of print

[Nazar78]

Hi all,

Good day! To start off, I only have the N32G455RE so I'm not familiar with the rest of the boards.

This issue of mine has been happening long way back since the existence of Alex's firmware. I done many troubleshooting but I just haven't got the time to ask. I'm asking here because this is the only one fork for Aquilas that's currently active.

The issue is as follows:

• I've modified the firmware (this fork, Alex's and even Original Marlin) to enable FAST PWM 1kHz variable changeable via custom gcode for my laser tool head. Basically the attempt to use PA0 hotend fan to control the laser PWM. Everything works as intended and been using it for some of my laser projects. The 3D printing part also works normally, I just need to run the custom gcode to switch the frequency else the hotend cooler will induce high pitch sound.

• ISSUE: But in the future if I ever need to change anything again (even the slightest one such as bed size) from the same workspace, the firmware would permanently crash restart at the beginning of a 3D print, laser gcodes works fine though. The heaters, steppers, endstops are all fine. This randomly happened but when it does, the crash would happened every time even after power cycle. There was no changes in PlatformIO version (currently Core Windows 6.1.11) or STM32 12.1.1 platform from what I can see.

• Clear the EEPROM, it still crashes.

• Reverted back all the changes (including the PWM changes) within the same workspace as if I had started doing the changes, clean then build, it still crashes.

• Reinstall PlatformIO including removing the /Users/%USERPROFILE%/.platformio and .pio, even removed the python cache I can find, clean then build, it still crashes.

• Did a full diff compare of both existing and new workspace paths and files. Only could find .pio directory created in the existing workspace but I did mentioned above I've removed it in the attempt to fix it to no available.

At this point, the only way I can get it to work again is to create a new workspace with a fresh copy of source code i.e. a new pull or tar/gz but then again I need to reapply all the intended changes. I could easily create a personal patch for this to automate stuffs but I'm just curious and this makes it cumbersome for me to upgrade or contribute creating a PR not knowing when it will happen again.

I got the hunch something got changed outside the build tree when I attempted to build the FAST PWM changes but I wasn't able to figure out which because most of the time it works until it doesn't. I've checked the PlatformIO Project Inspection, build in debug mode but there is nothing amiss. Could there be any cache that I would have miss out? Hope somebody has a clue.

TIA!

[Nazar78]

• Reinstall PlatformIO including removing the /Users/%USERPROFILE%/.platformio and .pio, even removed the python cache I can find, clean then build, it still crashes.

Apparently these two paths doesn't cause this issue even when the timers were modified. When the issue happened, doing a fresh git clone temporarily will fix it until it happen again. But again as mentioned I did a full diff compare and found no significant changes other than the intended changes in the workspace build tree.

Still looking and troubleshooting for a fix...

[Nazar78]

Still have no idea what's wrong with my workspace but I found a quick dirty workaround. Renamed the old build tree, git clone a fresh one then replace the new one with all of the old contents from the renamed previously. Fire up VS Code, clean and build, no crash on start of print, strange...

[Nazar78]

Found the culprit! It was one of my Windows Task Scheduler daily custom batch script, implemented very long ago, to clean temp/tmp files on the system drive. It cleared the path Marlin\src\gcode\temp.

[classicrocker883]

glad you found the problem! so this was a custom file to remove temp files? then it probably was removing the packages and frameworks from the .platformio folder, which should be in C:\Users<user name>\

that is why a fresh git clone will fix it temporarily.

[Nazar78]

The .platformio folder was not affected. The Marlin\src\gcode\temp folder was the issue as it got emptied.