<p>I'm trying to connect my PC to my Anet A8 through <a href="https://www.pronterface.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Pronterface</a> on Ubuntu.</p>
<p>But when I'm clicking on the &quot;connect&quot; button in Pronterface, all I see is &quot;<em>Connecting ...</em>&quot;.</p>
<p>What I did so far</p>
<ul>
<li>added my user to the <code>dialout</code> group</li>
<li>tried to run it as <code>root</code></li>
<li>tried different baudrates</li>
<li>switch to different USB cables</li>
<li>tried to install and run it on a different machine and different OS (Windows) with nearly the same result (additionally I see repeated lines with <code>M105</code>, but no response)</li>
</ul>
<p>The printer itself works - I want to connect to it, to &quot;PID tune&quot; it, because I added a different fan duct.</p>
<p><strong>How can I make sure the board isn't somewhat damaged, and its just my setup?</strong></p>

[{'answer_id': 14471, 'author': 'Mick', 'author_id': 3953, 'author_profile': 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/3953', 'pm_score': 0, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>You may need to install a device driver for the USB interface chip that your printer uses. I\'m guessing that the Anet A8 uses a clone of the FTDI FT232RL chip (which was and may still be common with cheap Chinese printers).</p>\n<p>If this is the case, you will need to install the appropriate driver from this site: <a href="https://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">FTDI Chip Virtual COM Port Drivers</a>.</p>\n<p>Edit: I can confirm that Pronterface will not work with my Tronxy X1 (which uses an FT232RL clone) on the latest version of Ubuntu.</p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 14473, 'author': '0scar', 'author_id': 5740, 'author_profile': 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/5740', 'pm_score': 1, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>I have this printer and used this board many times over USB.</p>\n<p>The genuine Arduino boards use the FTDI FT232RL to convert USB signals to UART signals.</p>\n<p>The problem with these Arduino based clone boards is that they do not use the FTDI chips as these are too expensive. These boards use a CH340G chip which is a Chinese clone which requires a specific driver to be installed before you can communicate with the board:</p>\n<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/C5712.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer" title="CH304G chipset on Anet A8 board"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/C5712.jpg" alt="CH304G chipset on Anet A8 board" title="CH304G chipset on Anet A8 board" /></a>\n<em>Image shows a close-up of the CH340G chipset on the Anet A8 controller board.</em></p>\n<p>When you bought the printer, the SD-card contained the driver that you need to install on your OS. I remember that this driver was for the Windows OS. However, you can download the driver for many platforms (Windows, Mac and Linux) directly from the <a href="http://www.wch.cn/download/CH341SER_EXE.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">manufacturer</a>.</p>\n'}]
['https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/questions/14470', 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com', 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/23680/']