I think I would try Pronterface, see what it says about the connection.
The cable should work if the connectors are matching, BUT there is a caveat (actually, two):
- make sure the cable is not too long.
- make sure it is a data cable and a good one.
2 is usually the problem. Most people buy cables to charge their phones and charging only needs two wires. Many manufacturer save money by just providing 5V and GND. You need a cable with four wires, a shielding and a minimum diameter of the wires. Manufacturers even try to save more money when already removed data lines and shielding, by reducing the diameter if the remaining wires. On top of that a thick fat wire is no guarantee you have a good cable. I have seen two wire cables which look like expensive ones, because they just used a bigger diameter of the rubber around the two wires. Plastic is cheap.
If the device on the other end is shown by name or type in windows you have data lines.
And never swap USB wires delivered by your devices. They may be “optimized” and do not work on other gear. I have glasses for my projector, which came with charging cables like used for the Raspberry Pi. The wires are to thin and the resistance is so high, that even a Pi1 is unstable, when using it. They charge the glasses just fine.
Also keep in mind that many 3d printer and PC mainboards are lacking a diode at the usb port.
If your printer is running, it may try to power your turned off computer over USB. In this case the entire printer gets (tries to get) powered over USB.
More visible is the other way around: The 3d printers display stays on, when connected to the computer, but the printer is turned off.
Ether way this may burn your usb connector or kill your PSU due to over current. I removed the 5V connecton on my USB cables used for 3D printing to avoid this issue.
Do not remove the GND (ground) connection! Common ground is required to get a proper connection.
Do not trust manufacturers of USB hardware. e.g. USB3 hubs with three to 5 ports are usually fake. Only one of the blue USB 3 ports is USB3 and the other are plain USB2. Because you cannot see it and they save money.
@Larry Bowers Unfortunately Windows USB to Serial driver support is a mess. Yes, I will admit I am a Mac guy, but I think I am being honest here. I just tested the latest versions of both my terminal website app and Mattercontrol from Matterhackers on two Windows machines. I have a very low-end AIWO machine I ordered for testing that is running Windows 10 Home 20H2 OS build 19042.985 and both programs worked properly. I have a much more expensive Microsoft Surface Go (that I really like as my travel machine) which is running Windows 10 Pro 21H1 OS build 19043.110 and this machine fails when tried with either program.
I will try and determine what is causing the difference and report back if I find anything.
@Larry Bowers I think I figured it out.
On the working Windows 10 machine, the driver that worked was listed as CH340. On the machine that was not working it was listed as RAMPS. I believe the RAMPS driver was installed when I added some other program and having two USB to COM drivers was messing up the machine. When I used the device manager to uninstall the RAMPS driver everything started working.
I would try the following. Open up the device manager while the USB cable is plugged in. Right-click on the COM port and select the option to uninstall the driver. Unplug and replug the USB cable and see if Windows installs a driver for you. It should install the CH340 driver.
If it does not try installing the CH340 driver listed at Sparkfun which is a respectable company.
How to Install CH340 Drivers - learn.sparkfun.com
This driver is used by anyone doing Arduino development.
I hope this helps. Let me know if this works out for you.
YES!! I ran across a thread over on Reddit this morning about this issue before reading your post so I downloaded and installed the driver from sparkfun and it resolved the problem. I was on my way here to tell you I found the solution and see you have the same fix.
I am able to access the Ender terminal with your browser based terminal. Now to have some fun.
Thanks Dr. Vax!