Nick,
Thanks. I looked at the code for the boot loader and can see now it should be sitting at the end of flash.
I have double checked my USB wires and reversed them, as expected no connectivity so I put them back knowing I got D+ and D- correct.
I used the STK500 to flash both the blink program at 0 and boot loader at or near end of device. It boots to the blink program fine but still can not get the boot loader to do anything useful through Arduino IDE.
Now if I attempt to upload the blink program from the IDE it seems to overwrite it. I am not sure with what since the STK500 s/w stopped at first change on verify and that was the first byte as 0xFF. So the bootloader is writing at least to the first page of flash.
One thing I never mentioned is that it's connected through a USB hub as another uses the hub. If I leave a mouse connected to the same hub it is fine on power up, but maybe there is an issue with having the uno board connected on POR, by this I mean connecting the hub to my laptop. I never checked this before removing the connector off the uno board.
I am going to burn a serial demo sketch using STK500 and see if the serial device conneciton and that to the PC are working.
Regards,
giggler