I just bought on ebay an arduino mega adk r1. The buyer told me the board works perfectly, but he was working on AVR studio (not Arduino IDE) and programming the board with an AVR programmer, so the bootloader was probably erased.
When I plug it through USB, my laptop doesn't recognize it at all (like it wasn't plugged in). Also, the only led that is on is the ON one, absolutely no blinking from RX or TX.
So, what I've being trying (without success) was to restore the bootloader, using an Arduino Nano as ISP.
First I used the official method, programming the Nano as ArduinoISP, and then burning the bootloader from the Arduino IDE. It always display a verification error, but as far as I know this is not relevant. Anyway, it doesn't solve the problem. I plug it again, no blinking from RT, RX, and my laptop still doesn't recognize it.
Also, I've seen in youtube that when an Arduino is programming another Arduino, both boards are blinking RT and RX leds. In my case, only the programmer one (the Nano) does it. Actually, I've never ever seen those leds on (and really would like to!)
Then I found Nick Gammon's solution.
After running it, it says the bootloader is successfully uploaded , and if I check it with the board detector (also from Nick Gammon) it says that everything works fine.
... but nothing happens.
So, I have no idea what to do next.
Any idea?
Am I doing something wrong?
What else can it be?
Thanks in advance!