I recently upgraded my Printrbot Simple to the latest version (1405). Along with the hardware upgrades, I flashed the new firmware which carriers the identifiers for plug and play support in Windows 8.1. With that firmware, win 8.1 no longer detects the usb/serial port as Teensy, but instead it knows it's a Printrbot Simple. The serial port driver installs, and windows adds a printer and print queue for the printrbot simple. It's great to see that support for 3d printing is starting to become mainstream, but as of right now I think it's going to cause a lot of trouble for those of us who have already been printing without the new windows functionality.
After the new drivers were installed, I fired up repetier to get started calibrating the printer. The new serial port driver was detected on com4 instead of com3, so I changed the port in printer settings, and tried to connect to the printer. Repetier-host promptly locked up. My extremely scientific wild arse guess is that the windows 3d printing components had attached to the COM port and kept it tied up, preventing repetier from using it. I don't think Repetier was to blame, exactly, for the lock up, it was probably just waiting indefinitely for the port to be available.
The immediate solution was to re-flash to a slighly older firmware revision, which does have support for the new hardware but still identifies to windows as a Teensy. Now I'm back to being able to connect, although unfortunately the new auto-level probe I got was defective, and so I am waiting for a replacement before I can actually print anything.
I'm curious, has the developer of Repetier started looking at this windows 8.1 3d printing functionality yet? Is it something that a future version of repetier will be able to take advantage of?
As of now, there aren't a lot of printers out there with new win 8.1 drivers available, but I'm sure over time they will become more common. Makerbot started offering an 8.1 driver late last year. If Printrbot starts shipping with the new firmware installed, and as existing owners upgrade, there will soon be a significant number of 3d printers in the market that support the new framework. Repetier is one of the best tools available, not just for 3d printing, but for managing all aspects of the 3d printing process. I hope it will be updated to work with (or work around) windows 8.1's printing system so that it can continue to be the software of choice for myself and other 3d printer owners.
