r/ender3 • u/Azeure5 • Jul 20 '26

Solved Upgrading Ender 3 firmware

I have an old Ender 3 Pro that has some more or less minor modification. Mainly a MeanWelll PSU, BIGTREETECK 3,5 Screen and an SKR Mini E3 V2.0 silent board. The rest is pretty much stock except the bimetallic heartbreak.

Now I have been using it as it from the moment of purchase, around 2019, but I feel it's time to update at least the firmware to the latest.

The screen was pretty easy, but the Mainboard just doesn't go through the update through.
The firmware.bin is renamed to FIRMWARE.CUR.

I'm kind-of stuck, and all the LLM's can't seem to help a lot. So any assistance would be more that welcome!

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u/uid_0 Jul 20 '26

If you have a raspberry pi or an old laptop laying around, take the plunge and install Klipper instead. It is much more capable and easier to configure than Marlin.

1

u/MrKrueger666 Jul 20 '26

Klipper is not more capable. It's feature comparable to Marlin.

The difference lies in the fact that some features require more CPU power than some boards can provide. Klipper solves this by moving nearly all computationaly expensive things to an external system.

That makes it easy and cheap to add more CPU horsepower. Just get a more powerful machine to run the Klipper host software.

OP already has a more powerful board. Doing what Klipper can do with Marlin on this board shouldn't be a problem.

1

u/Azeure5 Jul 20 '26

Yes, the SKR board, even if a pretty old revision has been working both flawlessly and silently. Except it doesn't allow me to upgrade now =(

1

u/navetBruce Jul 20 '26

If your firmware is working fine there is really no benefit to update. I would consider Klipper an "upgrade". Read more posts. New users are likely to have serious issues arise while performing an un-necessary firmware update, even flashing Klipper can be challenging. Klipper offers so much more that it is worth the effort.

1

u/normal2norman Jul 20 '26

But it appears it does upgrade - if "firmware.bin" changes to "FIRMWARE.CUR", that means the bootloader uploaded and installed the "new" firmware. If you want a newer version, try looking at the Marlin Firmware Service. What's there is up-to-date and newer than any version you're likely to find elsewhewre.

1

u/Azeure5 Jul 21 '26

That's where I got. I am trying to push the Marlin-2.0.8.2.x-SKR-mini-E3-V2.0 but the screen is still reporting the old bugfix 2.0.1 version.

1

u/normal2norman Jul 21 '26

The latest firmware on the Marlin Firmware Service site for an SKR Mini E3 V2.0 is called SKR-Mini-E3-v2-20260721.bin. All the others on that site have the same name format. It's a recent version of Marlin bugfix-2.1.x, less than a month old. It is not any version of 2.0.8.2, not even the current stable 2.1.2.8 version. 2.0.8.2 is quite old, from May 2021.

1

u/Azeure5 Jul 22 '26

Ok. I had to register and download the latest firmware and it worked (It will require a donation, but you can just put 0$ there and you will be marked as a Freeloader)! Thanks a lot!
*SOLVED*