Fried board and laptop?

Hi, I have had my printer working successfully for a couple weeks now, but I just screwed up. My thermistor to the hotend has been a little sketchy from the very beginning and the connector seemed to have some small defects making it difficult to attach to the T0 pins on my RAMPS 1.4. A few days ago after unplugging it for maintenance, I couldn't get it plugged back in. So after a little force and the power and my laptop connected(I know, dumb idea) I managed to bend the pins. When they bent, a wisp of smoke went up from the board(near the D10, D9, D8 connections) and my laptop turned off and hasn't come back on since. So my question is what burned out on the board and what needs to be replaced? I'm not heartbroken about the laptop because it was my backup, but I don't want to test it out again on my Macbook. What can I do to test the RAMPS? Is it possible it was either the shield or just the Arduino that fried and not both? Could my actual printer be damaged from this? Thanks in advance and please let me know if there is more information I can provide.

-Jake

Arduino/ramps IS your printer. Or at least the brains of it. It is highly unlikely that the frame, motors and wires has been damaged, but if the Arduino is dead, you need a new one and install new firmware on it as well.

It sounds odd that bending t0 caused hat much damage.

Try dismounting ramps and power up arduino with dc power. See if blinks as it should and measure 5v on it.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/24/2016 06:11PM by dintid.

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Jake-
I had the same problem with a cheap prusa I bought from Replikeo.

I had troubles all throughout the build and then I plugged ramps into my laptop one day during calibration to keep working. What do you know, my laptop shut off. It turned back on but then when I tried again it did it again. I got smart so I didn't try again but now 2/3 of my USB ports were dead.

Dang.

At least I still have a laptop. After 25-30 hours of trying to fix everything I decided, this is nonsense, so I returned the printer.

Most exhausting Christmas break I've ever had.

And I still haven't got my money back because Mr. Gilles Vigner of Replikeo is on Chinese new year.

On the plus side, that was also the most I've ever learned over break. Now am designing my own model, quite a step up from the prusa.