Arduino Due w/ FTDI232R won't connect to USB

[Orchid0]

Hi,
I'm a student and we made a robot in our early fabrication courses. Now that I am further along we are programming these robots. The teacher who developed this board has left the faculty and the other teachers are unsure of my issue due to unfamiliarity with FTDI.

Issues:
-Last year I was able to program this as an Arduino Due. I remember it being a hassle and I had to use Arduino v1.0.5.

-Now I charged the battery (after not using it for about a year) and It will not pop up in the arduino ports or device manager under USB or other comm ports or anywhere.

Information:
-FTDI232R chip
-Programs as Arduino Duemilinova
-Using Windows 10
-Tried with arduino 1.0.5 and newest 1.8 version.
-connects via miniUSB
-Batteries are able to charge via USB, just no connectivity between computer and robot.
-Tried installing drivers from FTDI website.



Anybody experienced with these have any suggestions or things to try?
I do have schematics that I can reference but they aren't my property so I can't really just post them.
Thanks a bunch!

[westfw]

Ah.  A "Due" is MUCH different that a "Duemilinova"  (2 vs 2009 !)
Can you post a photo of the board?   Is there any documentation (schematics, etc)?
An FTDI chip theoretically doesn't have any firmware that can go bad - it should always show up as a COM port.
OTOH, see "FTDIGate" for some questionable measures FTDI took to punish counterfeit chip users.

[Orchid0]

Hey,
It programs as a duemilinova.
I can grab a photo later today. I do have schematics as I said in my first post, however I don't want to post them... Schools design not mine.

The chips we have are not counterfeit as they say FTDI on them and I know they were purchased from digikey or mouser (only suppliers they use)

[westfw]

Hmm.  Duemilanove...  Does it have a power jumper or switch for selecting between USB and "external" power?  Is that correctly installed/switched?  For the computer to not recognize the FTDI at all, there is not a lot that could be wrong.  if it recognized the FTDI, but wouldn't "upload" (for example), then there would be debugging steps...

The chips we have are not counterfeit as they say FTDI on them

Heh.  So did the counterfeits.  (that's what makes them counterfeits rather than clones.)

and I know they were purchased from digikey or mouser (only suppliers they use)

That, however, is a pretty good indication that they are genuine.