Trying to build my first Reprap

Ok so I started my Mendal several years ago when I was in college and am just now trying to finish it. I have it all built but can't get the controls to talk to the computer. I am using Pronterface as the host software on ubuntu 12.04 x64. Pronterface sees the controller and connects to it but I just get
st
strtst
ststst
in the dialog window coming from the controller they keep repeating in random order. My controller & electronics are the techzone remix found here. [reprap.org]
It came with firmware on it which I haven't changed.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: If it makes any difference the main board has both a red and green light lit.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/23/2013 05:15PM by scientist434.

I don't know the gen 3 electronics, but I would take a wack at making sure the baud rate is set correctly. This usually presents with some other non printable characters that are displayed as symbols on my RAMPS, but it's worth a shot. Also with it being so old, I would probably look into updating that firmware. Could be the gcode interpreter on that firware is too far out of date to understand today's gcode.

Make sure you have the right baudrate set!
The original RepRap FiveD firmware ran by default at 19,200 baud.

---

Bob Morrison
Wörth am Rhein, Germany
"Luke, use the source!"
BLOG - PHOTOS - Thingiverse

I'm using 19,200 as my baudrate. I tried all of the baudrate options and thats the only one that doesn't give me an error about invalid characters caused by an invalid baud rate. I will try updating the firmware after work. Is there a recommended firmware that I should update to? I was thinking of trying sprinter since I have seen that mentioned several places.
Some other things I noticed while playing with it, I only get the red light on the board while Pronterface is trying to connect if I close Pronterface then I just have a green light.
Also I don't have the endstops wired in yet since I wanted to see if it worked before wiring them in would that cause any problems?
I'm also not sure if its actually completely connecting since in the terminal window I started pronterface from it just always says "connecting..." and then just goes to the "st" stuff never actually says connected. I also can't interact with any of the axis controls in pronterface.

I tried updating the firmware and kept getting a sync avr sync error. I am currently setting up a windows 7 32 bit machine to try it on 32 bit and see if thats my problem. Will report back if that works.

I tried to updated the firmware to sprinter however I keep getting the following error "avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0xfc" Also tried Pronterface on my 32-bit windows 7 machine and it connects to the printer as seen in the attached screen shot but I can't actually get the printer to respond to anything.

Any suggestions?