refurbishing an old Mendel.

Hello, all!

I just got what appears to be an original Mendel from a friend. I've powered it up and all seems well but when I try to send it any serial data the red 'debug led' just blinks 5 times repeatedly in succession and it does nothing. I can't get Pronterface to talk to it or the Arduino Serial monitor for that matter. I am using an old arduino board for an ftdi and I'm fairly certain I have it wired up right.

I tried using the manual for the original Mendel on RepRap.org but a great deal of the links there are broken and much of the software/firmware in that manual has not been updated since 2012 and no longer works on a modern pc.

Is there a different firmware i can use on the reprap motherboard v1.2 besides the sanguino stuff? Also, does anyone in the whole wide internet know what the led blinking 5 times means?

I'm new to this whole thing so any help is greatly appreciated.
-Thanks

Its difficult to get away from sanguino stuff, when thats the processor...

Last time i tried it marlin still worked on these boards, but not with any extras (ie no lcd and no sd card support, the image size then exceeds the eeprom size.)

Teacup will also still work on this board.

It probably running old makerbot firmware, from before they went evil... (talks a binary protocol, needs ReplicatorG)

No idea on the 5 flashes though...

The bootloader does flash the leds on power up, but I cant recall how many times, or even if this board displays them.

Now in saying that teacup and marlin used to work, Im meaning with a stepper based extruder hacked on, not using the dc motor controller board. and you still have to do something for thirmistors and mosfets, pololu drivers etc....

There is gen3+ daughter board... [www.lulzbot.com]
which replaces extruder controller with standard mofets etc

Another thing to note, the stepper drivers you using if they are the original type are only capable of 1/2 stepping, so loud and jerky



It really is junk these days.... just replace it with a mega and ramps and some pololu drivers, they are ridiculously cheap now

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 07/10/2016 04:19AM by Dust.

replicator G seems to work great. It even controls the dc extruder motor and the heated bed. Now I just have to get the thing functioning mechanically. In the end I may just scrap the whole thing and rebuild it as a prusa.

Thanks for your help.