Another newb with connection problems

I have a mendelmax 1.5 and am fairly new to the 3d printing world. I am using a Mac first of all. I have power, my board lights up on occasion, prontoface says I am connectedbut says SD inti fail.

next i have heat, no motor movement, no fan, no nothing from the printer. I have a constant green LED on, on the board, and a short LED blip when i plug in the USB.

I am kind of last right now, since nothing seems to be working other than the power supply fan. i checked all my wiring and it all appears good from the board to the components.

any ideas? everything is connected other than the heat bed.

thanks for any help or advice you can send my way.

some more quick info. i am building the blomker kit using an arduino board. im us a mac with OS x, also downloaded python and pyserial that are specifically for mac OS. still nothing has changed. i believe i have all the software now, but still nothing is being power on the printer.

pronterface still tells me the printer is online, but tells me echo SD init failed. also proterface tells me motors are off and i cannot turn them on with the cotrol panel

Have you actually compiled and uploaded Marlin to your Arduino?

Ignore the SD fail - that will display if you have no SD card system in place - it can be changed in firmware so it doesn't report it but nothing to worry about. Also, Pronterface does not tell you the motors are off - that button is a user button that you can click to remove power from the motors in standby.
You need to tell us what shield you have - is it a RAMPS board?

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Waitaki 3D Printer

Here's what *should* happen:

Click "watch temp" and you should get someting around 20 to 30C for your bed and hot end temps. If you do, you are talking to the board. If you get a bunch of errors then yes indeed you don't really have comunication. If you get some crazy negative temp, your thermistor(s) are wired wrong (open maybe). If you get a > 300C reading they are shorted.

Past that, yes, knowing which board you have would be helpfull....