recovering two bricked ESP32C6
recovering two bricked ESP32C6:
Two of my ESP32C6's stopped showing up on the USB serial bus. In hindsight I think what happened is I tapped
the "upload" button a second time during upload, and that spawned another uploader, and the two fought and
locked up the process, trashing the bootloader. Since these ESP use a "virtual" USB interface, if there's a
problem with the bootloader, USB doesn't fire up.
I started down the rabbit-hole of re-flashing the bootloader, but then thought to check the Arduino IDE for one
and thankfully it's there. I put the ESP into recovery mode (hold B, press and release R) and that popped it
up in the serial list in the IDE. Can't upload to it like that, but CAN upload the bootloader. One of them
took two attempts, the other took one. The programs they uploaded didn't run, but I could then upload a regular
sketch and they were both back in business.
This entire ordeal was complicated by the "USB CDC on boot" flag randomly getting switched to "Disabled" for
these boards, causing them to ALL stop sending data over the serial console. The USB was there, it selected
for baud rate, but it just didn't SHOW anything. I have NO idea how that got disabled. It's probably just
something I'm going to have to keep an eye on for next time it decides to troll me.
ESP32C6-1 bootloader burn failed
ESP32C6-1 bootloader burn succeeded
ESP32C6-1 board info
ESP32C6-1 upload successfu
highest resolution images
last updated 02/06/2026 at 18:17:12 by make_www_index.command version 2026.02.05.A
