That makes sense. I managed to recover the chip by popping it into a different board and programming it. It even works in the original board now.

I'm mainly rambling now, in case this is useful for anyone who comes across this problem. (You may not have bricked the Atmega after all.) It seems related to this: http://arduinology.blogspot.com/2012/02/repeated-resets-on-webtime.html

I may have taken up too much memory at some point with an earlier draft of the code. Or maybe the motors created some kind of electrical noise.

Anyway, thanks!

I know. I thought the ULN2803's would be isolation enough, but they apparently weren't. They worked fine for quite a while, then started acting up. I've ordered some optocoupler arrays to give it another go.

But back to the topic at hand. With no motors or anything attached, pin 13 is blinking when nobody told it to. Pin 13 is never mentioned in the code. Does anyone know what that's all about? Atmega death rattle?

Yes, with Vin though, not the 5V.

Loopback test was successful. Code is attached.

I take it this isn't some known way for the Arduino or ATmega to scream for help or something?

To be clear, this is NOT about running the Blink example.

I've had an issue with a Duemilanove. The ATmega is apparently fried, or half-fried, or something. It has stopped running the code I've loaded onto it, and instead just blinks pin 13 pretty quickly, and I can't upload new code. If I try, I get "avrdude: ser_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding".

I'm not really asking for a fix, I'm just wondering what the blinking is caused by. Is it an error message of some kind? Whatever it is, it wasn't in the code I uploaded to the board.

I found one other thread where a couple people reported something similar. They found a work around (that hasn't work for me), but they never explained why the blinking happens. Does anyone know?
http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1248528012/6#6
http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1248528012/14#14

One clue: On the troubleshooting page it points out that the bootloader blinks pin 13 once on startup. (3 times for NG board, and apparently 3 for the Uno as well.) Maybe it's stuck repeating that startup sequence for some reason?

Quick note: Obviously the IC in that diagram isn't an atmega8u2, but a breakout board I made. I've attached what that looks like.

I know this is an old thread, but if you're still struggling with this, maybe this will help. I managed to pull this off yesterday. I was able to program an atmega8u2 on a breadboard (with a breakout PCB) using an AVR ISP mkII programmer. I tested it by loading the Blink example onto an atmega326-PU that had the Uno bootloader on it.

My circuit is a bit different from yours. I'm using USB bus power and I think the reset pins are handled a little differently. I've attached a pdf of the Fritzing breadboard. I should be documenting this better sometime soon.

I would also love to see this page updated. I've been going around in circles trying to pull this off, finding lots of different (undated) tutorials with slightly different advice, slightly different hardware libraries, etc, none of which seems to work.

It tutorials had publish dates, or existed on a wiki, this would be less of an issue. The people in the small crew that actually can update this page, I'm sure are terribly busy.

I'd like to get some help with this library to make an Arduino appear as a HID MIDI device: http://code.google.com/p/vusb-for-arduino/

I've successfully used this library to make an arduino act like a keyboard. How would I go about making it appear as a MIDI device instead? I assume I would need to copy the library, rename it, and then change something in usbconfig.h, but I'm not sure what to change. Any tips?

Ah! found it. It's working beautifully now, thank you!

Those changes are made to avrdude.conf, or dealing with WinAVR. It seems like these are specific to the Windows platform, correct? Is there a similar file on Mac OS X systems to edit?

Well, I'm not out of the woods yet. It looks like I haven't been able to change the clock frequency or something. Instead of running at 8MHz, it seems to be running at 1MHz, but still running the program as if it was running at 8MHz. For example, delay(1000) takes 8 seconds, instead of 1.

Like I said, there is an error when I try to Burn the Bootloader in Arduino-0022. Here's the verbose output of that error: http://pastebin.com/7D9GYimW

Incidentally, if I select "ATtiny85 at 1MHz (internal oscillator; BOD disabled)", then delay(1000) takes 1 second, as it should. I would try burning the 16MHz bootloader with an external oscillator, but I'm not sure how to connect the oscillator to the ATtiny.

Programming ATtiny's at 1MHz is cool, but it would be nice to have a faster clock for serial support, etc. If I can just get that clock frequency changed, I'm good to go.

Like ateller, I also had success with Arduino 0022 and the MIT/HLT library. I did get an error when loading the Bootloader, but if I ignore it I can still load the Blink example. I tried with some ATtiny85's that I haven't used yet just to be sure. Other details:

• 119 ohms (from combined resistors) between 5V and RESET
• 10uF capacitor between GND and reset
• Mac OSX 10.6.8;/li]
  

Not sure if the capacitor s necessary since ateller had success without it. I also tried Arduino 1.0 with the other library ( http://code.google.com/p/arduino-tiny/ ), but still no luck there. It's totally worth keeping 2 versions around to make this possible. If I can help debug the 1.0 version, I'd be happy to provide more info or try other things.

(w00t!)

Installing Arduino-0022, loading ArduinoISP from it and trying to load the modified BLink example failed on Compile: http://pastebin.com/Qa9eDRKt

Maybe I'll try it from my older computer that doesn't have Arduino 1.0 installed yet....

Here's the verbose output from when I try to build and upload the modified Blink program to the ATTiny85. It's too long for the forum, so here's a pastebin: http://pastebin.com/fGFBi10B

Does this help anyone understand what's going wrong?