ATMEGA644P arrived

ATMEGA644P arrived on Friday, used a mini drill with auger bit & very small/thin cutting disc to remove the 644, cleaned up pads with a soldering iron & solder wick, tagged new 644P in place (checking polarity, spot in corner) and soldered all legs of 644P in place, bridged a few in the process but not to worry a little solder wick applied with a hot iron removed the bridges.

Bleep tested everything before powering up, flashed boot loader (644P.hex) downloaded from random web location (properly this time) I am assuming that a bootloader is a bootloader and there are not many different types of bootloader (this could be a poor assumption on my part) but if it loads firmware then it must be correct?

Loaded firmware using Arduino IDE worked first time no (644) tweaks necessary, did notice some different behaviour with the new 644P chip, firmware loads fine, repeatable, but no debug light flashing? This seems odd considering the firmware was supposedly designed for a 644P.

But I still get no RS485 comms to my extruder board! (same old brick wall then!) oh well at least I have eliminated the possibility that the chip type is part of this or any future issues (I hope)

So I am now back where I was before the chip upgrade wondering how best to test for RS 485 comms without needing to purchase a RS 485 transceiver.

One thing I did notice earlier today when reading on the original Gen3 RepRap setup guide is that the testing page

http://reprap.org/wiki/Testing_RepRap_Electronics

shows the extruder connected to J4 not J1 as I would have expected (I seem to remember that the firmware is supposed to poll all possible connected extruders so this “should” not be a problem) I will retest everything with extruder on J4 and see if it makes any difference. (I have tried other J ports for the RS485 connection to the extruder with no success as yet)

I really need to get some other software working rather than just trying RepG (which is my preferred option) I was using only RepRap Host when I was running PIC based electronics but this was half the reason to upgrade to give me more software options.

I am currently having no success at all in getting my motherboard to talk GCodes with RepRap Host software, GCodes are sent but never received.

RepG only works when I use the “sanguino3G” driver set in the Machines.xml file of RepG, if I try and use the “reprap5d” driver I get no comms with motherboard same issue as RepRap host I think.

Am I barking up the wrong tree here by using the “sanguino3g” driver does this prevent me from using any “fived” firmware?