<p>I'm trying to connect my PC to my Anet A8 through <a href="https://www.pronterface.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Pronterface</a> on Ubuntu.</p>
<p>But when I'm clicking on the &quot;connect&quot; button in Pronterface, all I see is &quot;<em>Connecting ...</em>&quot;.</p>
<p>What I did so far</p>
<ul>
<li>added my user to the <code>dialout</code> group</li>
<li>tried to run it as <code>root</code></li>
<li>tried different baudrates</li>
<li>switch to different USB cables</li>
<li>tried to install and run it on a different machine and different OS (Windows) with nearly the same result (additionally I see repeated lines with <code>M105</code>, but no response)</li>
</ul>
<p>The printer itself works - I want to connect to it, to &quot;PID tune&quot; it, because I added a different fan duct.</p>
<p><strong>How can I make sure the board isn't somewhat damaged, and its just my setup?</strong></p>

You may need to install a device driver for the USB interface chip that your printer uses. I'm guessing that the Anet A8 uses a clone of the FTDI FT232RL chip (which was and may still be common with cheap Chinese printers).
If this is the case, you will need to install the appropriate driver from this site:
FTDI Chip Virtual COM Port Drivers
.
Edit: I can confirm that Pronterface will not work with my Tronxy X1 (which uses an FT232RL clone) on the latest version of Ubuntu.