I have a Epson XP-970 printer that broke the other day. Ten-twenty seconds after booting the printer stops whatever it was doing and the display shows a

system error “302608”

Customer support wasn’t very helpful, and a Google search showed me exactly one hit of someone who also had this problem, but on solution.

With the help of Gemini, we cracked the case. I installed the firmware updater from Epson’s website, connected my laptop to the printer using a usb-c to usb-b cable. I then booted the printer in “recovery mode”, by putting my fingers in the top right corner of the touch screen and holding the power button for about 15 seconds. Right after the power button starts to flash I let go of screen and button. Some white text appeared (if you don’t let go fast enough red text appears and you have to try again). I then updated the firmware using the updater. The updater said “upload complete”, but apparently this doesn’t mean that the update is complete. You have to wait for about 2-3 minutes for the firmware to install (no indication from printer that something is happening). If you reboot before it finishes, you are cooked because the printer wil be in a non-recoverable state. When the update is complete white text appears on the touch screen saying something like

update mode FINISHED ROM VERSION 02.77.PI 2205 ROM1 FIXSUM E9C4 ROM2 FIXSUM CDEF

and the power button starts flashing. To reboot, instead of pressing the power button you have to touch the touch screen, and only then can you use the button the reboot the printer.

Not very friendly, but it made my printer work again.