I've bought a few of the pololu stepper drivers A4988 to populate a ramps1.3 board used in printrbot. Before building the mechanics I soldered together the ramps board and plugged it all together with my arduino mega2560 and the drivers. Having tried to work out the best software combination with marlin version and either pronterface or replicator G I could not for the life of me get any action from the steppers in the control panel for either host software. Anway I tried with only 1 driver plugged into ramps at a time just in case there were any shorts etc. After much persevering of trying many things and bleary eyed in the dim light at night I accidently misaligned the driver in the ramps slot and sparks and smoke ensued. Realising I'd not only damaged the driver but my mega as well I immediately ordered replacements. However it's at least a 2 week wait from China. So I thought I'll start back at the basics with my arduino duemilanove and the A4988 in a breadboard.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/index.php/blog/show/a4988-and-steppers-my-experience-and-mistakes