In the meantime, I have been working on the laptop again. I made another mistake yesterday, and tried to update the virus killer to the latest version. It only took two attempts and some 4 hours!
After the dubious amount of success I had with skeinforge and python, I decided to try an easy-to-install option next - RepRap Host. It turned out not to be so easy after all -
I found the page on the wiki, and started downloading what I needed. I went and got the latest version from Github, and unzipped it. The wiki mentions a .BAT file that launches the program, which should be visible in the root directory. I went to look for it, and it wasn't there. A quick search revealed it was hiding in a sub-folder (lib/system-dependant/windows-I586). running it however resulted in an error (which I forgot to screenshot). Inspecting the error text suggested that the software needed to be moved to "program files/reprap" - I step I had glossed over in the wiki, believing it was for the sake of neatness. However, this location is coded-in, and so I moved the files there and tried again - same error message.
I updated the Java install to the latest version of release 6, and took the extra step of installing the JDK as well, but to no avail - I still got the same error. It appeared not to be able to find the "main" class. I edited the .bat to see if there was a difference between "programfiles" and "program files", which there wasn't.
Getting a bit frustrated by this point, I remembered the wiki page had a link to sourceforge, and an older version of the software. Whilst the sourceforge site is frozen now, the last update is only a couple of months old - it is dated at 9th of May, 2011. I downloaded this version, deleted the github copy and unzipped this to the "program files/reprap" directory.
The .bat file was exactly where it was supposed to be, and a double click resulted in some satisfying activity and the below windows:
Looking good! I loaded one of the test STL's I'd used the other day, but it didn't appear on the build bed whilst a second one did - I suspect that the stl is corrupt.
While I'm glad I have it working, I can't help feeling that there is a simple solution to my earlier problem. I couldn't see any help on the wiki though, nor in the documentation in the GIT download (although I may have missed it).
I'll see how this version of the host works, and if I need to I'll work out how to update it later.
Up next: More building! (Hopefully....)
