long delay() values = programmer is not responding

My Arduino Uno was working fine. Now every time I try to upload a sketch, I receive the error "programmer is not responding".

Judging from the similar problems others have had when their sketches had too much serial I/O in the loop(), I think my problem is that my loop() contains too much delay (about 2 seconds). I think the loader tries to talk to the board, but gives up in less than 2 seconds.

So to be happy in the future, I think I need to make sure the loop() time is always short - for example, under 1 second.

Can anyone with more experience with the Arduino Uno say whether this is true (that a loop() that takes more than a few seconds will cause "programmer is not responding" errors)?

Thanks.

I have observed excessive serial will cause "programmer not responding." However, I have not seen any issues in using delay().

No any delay() should have no bearing at all. Upon a reset the bootloader is activated and that is what talks to the IDE for new uploads. The user code has not even started at that stage of the process. It would seem it has to be either a auto-reset issue, or a 8u2 usb issue or the new bootloader issue. I don't have a Uno so I can't really talk from experiance.

Lefty

Thanks for the tips. I'm beginning to believe I've fried part of the hardware. See http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1295240179/0#0 for my sob-story there.