I purchased a kit to assemble of a Prusa i3 that came with the Melzi 2.0 board. The kit came with minimal assembly instructions for the hardware, but no electrical instructions or software advice. The seller didn't respond to my request for additional instructions. I'd love to be a "maker", but I have no experience. So, maybe this is an easy problem for someone else to solve.
I have the machine hardware assembled, and the eletronics routed (as best I could figure out from intuition and web searches). For software, I downloaded the Repetier-host. I am under the impression that the Melzi 2.0 comes loaded with firmware,so I didn't do anything there. I connected the printer to my laptop running Windows 8.1 via the USB cable and was told that I needed a driver to communicate with it. I downloaded the current DTFI drivers. It looked like the Repetier-host software could see the printer and I added some settings like hotbed size, etc. Then I turned the printer off to pick up my kids from school. When I came back to it, the Repetier software could no longer see the printer, and a com port was no longer assigned to it. In fact, it looked like the FTDI driver had gone missing. I tried to reinstall the driver several times, and now I get a blue screen each time I connect the printer. My windows 8.1 shuts down and restarts itself. I also tried moving the jumper and unplugging the printer's wall power to have my computer supply the power via USB. As soon as I connected the USB to my laptop, my laptop started buzzing and brought up the blue screen. I tried to connect it to a Windows XP computer (yes, I still have one), and once I downloaded and assigned the driver, I get a blue screen there too.
Am I just having a driver problem, or did I mess something up with the connections to the Melzi board? I'm a bit deperate for help, and would appreciate any advice I can get. I'm very excited to get the machine up and running. I'd be happy to post pictures of the i3 and the board connections if that would help.
