My Arduino Pro Mini was working fine, I could upload sketches no problem, and the code functioned just the way it was supposed to. Then I left the board on overnight on a 9V battery power source. The next day the battery was dead (not surprising) but the board has also somehow been damaged I think. The loaded sketch no longer works and I have been unable to upload a new copy. The red power light is on and the green LED is on a slow blink. When I try and upload the green LED pauses briefly and then I get the following error messages:
avrdude: verification error, first mismatch at byte 0x0000
0x0c != 0xff
avrdude: verification error; content mismatch
So 2 questions:
Is there any way to test the board to see if it has been damaged? So far I haven't been able to find any instructions on how to do that.
Is this a known issue that letting a battery run down might create a problem?
As you can tell from the post this is all pretty new to me so any help will be appreciated.
Thanks!
Also just noted the chip seems to get quite hot, which I never noticed before.
How was the 9V battery connected, exactly? To which pin?
Dblackb99:
Is there any way to test the board to see if it has been damaged? So far I haven't been able to find any instructions on how to do that.
I'd measure current consumption for starters. I haven't measured a Pro Mini myself, but I'd expect 12-15mA with nothing connected to it. If that looked OK, I'd try an ICSP programmer.
Is this a known issue that letting a battery run down might create a problem?
Not that I'm aware.
Also just noted the chip seems to get quite hot, which I never noticed before.
That is a bad sign. Is this with nothing else connected to the Pro Mini?
Thanks for the response. After killing a second board I just discovered (head-slap) a wiring issue that was pumping 9V into the VCC connector. I will wire up yet another Pro Mini (correctly this time) and hopefully that will solve the problem. But I think it's safe to assume I have trashed the first 2 Pro Minis.