Cuts 4.8.0 USB not connecting

Dang water! It gets into everything :frowning:

Great news. The laptop now boots, after allowing it to completely dry out while blowing a space heater on it.

I also got Cura working, thanks to an excellent YouTube video. It was short and directly to the point, with complete instructions for fixing it. The video is "How to fix Cura or Slicer Not CONNECTING to 3D Printer Creality Ender 3?" by Joseph-Israel.

Turns out that Cura doesnā€™t allow long enough for the Marlin 1.1.9.1 FW to initialize
on the ANET A8 8-bit board. The following modification will tune Cura to wait longer
to connect after it reboots the printer.

Inside file C:\Program Files\Ultimaker Cura 4.8.0\plugins\USBPrinting\AutoDetectBaudJob.py

Change:
wait_bootloader_times = [1.5, 5, 15]
To:
wait_bootloader_times = [5, 15, 30]

I can now even print with a brim, which solved one of my difficult prints which was lifting - but no more. Now I need to finish printing a list of improvements for the printer, and then disassemble it and start all over. Should be fun tuning it all again later, but I guess itā€™s a good way to learn. And I can start with something to compare against. Iā€™ll have to select a few parts to print now and after for comparison.

Hey Irv, arenā€™t there some calibration prints models available on DrVax? Can you point me at them?

Great news about the laptop. Congrats.

Thanks for the path to the AutoDetectBaudJob.py file. I just modified mine so it only looks for 115200, since I know thatā€™s the BAUD of my printer. Iā€™m hoping it will speed up getting linked. You also confirmed my suspicion that Cura is auto-BAUDing. I still think itā€™s stupid, cause you have to wait too long just to avoid setting the rate once.

Yeah, it does take about a minute or two to connect. Let me know if hardcoding the BAUD rate speeds up the connection time.

It did indeed. Itā€™s now connecting in less than 15 seconds. I suspect I know whatā€™s happening. The 1st timeout in the AutoDetectBaudJob.py file was 3 seconds. When it doesnā€™t connect successfully @115200 within 3 seconds, it moves on to the next speed, 250000 BAUD. There are 9 speeds in all. So, itā€™s going to take at least 27 seconds just to go through the list the 1st time. Then it moves on to the 15 second timeout round. That, I believe, should be the 1 where it connects successfully.

My next step is to remove the 3 second timeout option altogether; start with 15. If that helps some more, Iā€™ll play with changing the timeout period to get the shortest time possible. I believe these will be small, incremental improvements at best. I think the biggest change is avoiding that 1st run through all the BAUD rates.

Iā€™ll try removing all the BAUD rates except the one the printer is using and see if it helps speed things up.

These non standard baud rate use of the old standard firmware is really annoying.

I upgraded my stock AnetA8 last weekend to use Marlin 2.0.7.2 and finally I can store the default baud rate in OctoPrint and connect without always using the auto mode.

I changed to 1st connection timeout from 3 to 10 seconds and Cura now connects even a little faster than it did.

I removed all the baud rates except 115200 which the FW is using, and then changed the boot wait settings to 30,30,30. It now connects in under 30 seconds every time. I believe it was timing out on 5 seconds, and the retry of 15 seconds was timing out, and the final timeout of 30 seconds was connecting. By making the first timeout 30 seconds, it seems to always connect on the first try. Seems to connect in 17 to 28 seconds now, based upon limited testingā€¦

Mine connects a little more quickly, but less than 30 seconds is a lot better than 1 to 2 minutesā€¦

OctoPrint connects in less than 2 seconds, so there is room for Cura.

Just like Pronterface, and most other serial comm programs.

Agreed. Iā€™m good with it now. Perhaps your main board is just faster to initialize.

Certainly possible. Itā€™s so weird. In the 70ā€™s, at work, I was the goto guy for serial comms. Funny to dredge up that old knowledge.

Hey, remember Modem7?

Oh yes. I actually wrote part of Y Modem & Modem 12. I got pretty good at programming UARTs.

Those were the good old days, back when computers were actually fun. I wrote package to implement windowing using ASCII characters, s command shell much like bash but on CP/M, and all sorts of fun stuff. These days it seems all we do is chase schedules and bugs. Guess itā€™s nearing time for me to get out of the race and retire. Then I can go back to those days. :wink:

CP/M; now, those were the days. Believe it or not, I have a functioning Kaypro II luggable in the basement store room. I should take a photo of it and post it here.

My last CP/M machine was an S100 bus based machine, which I built totally myself. I even designed and wire-wrapped most of the boards. Those were my early engineering days. But I no longer have it, as it was too much to move around all these years.

I built an S100 bus computer too, back in the late 70s. I also worked on a NorthStar Horizon, and Dimension, plus an Osborne 1, an Ohio Scientific rackmount computer, and TRS80 models I & III.