RX Led always on. USB ports disappeared

Hi,

I just received my Esplora and TFT LCD, connected it to my MacBook Pro (10.6.8) and yesterday everything was fine. Started hacking, no worries.

This morning the USB ports have disappeared. I tried everything. I use an external keyboard, and it is working well. I plugged the Esplora in the external keyboard usb slot. No dice. Unplugged the keyboard, plugged the Esplora instead. No dice. As soon as I plug in the board, the RX led turns on, and nothing else happens.

Is something fried on the board? The last sketch I uploaded before things went awry seems to be running (since the TFT LCD is on and displays the text I'd expect it to).

Thanks in advance.

EDIT
After reading some more on this forum and others, I think it is probably a bug in my current sketch, which uses Serial.print(). I think it keeps sending stuff on the serial port, preventing sketch upload. I read somewhere that another fellow with a similar problem managed to unbrick his board by uploading repeatedly. No such luck for me so far...

So I guess my updated question is, is it possible to wipe the flash memory, or make the Esplora reboot without loading the current sketch?

Thanks

D

Did you read this page?

http://arduino.cc/en/Main/arduinoBoardEsplora

It has advice about resetting the board prior to uploading.

Yeah. The reset button is not very helpful. The Esplora reboots, reloads the last sketch -- and the serial port is again busy.