Hello!
I have a problem trying to burn a bootloader onto an ATMega 168 microcontroller. I am stuck and need help. here is the situation:
Sorry if this question has been asked and answered. I have seen some people having the same kind of problem on these, but none of the proposed solutions have helped me.
In my university course I need to build an temperature sensing device. I am not allowed to use an Arduino and instead they want us to use an microcontroller on its own eg. ATMega 168.
To this end I have been following the following instructions from the Arduino site:
https://docs.arduino.cc/built-in-examples/arduino-isp/ArduinoToBreadboard/
From my university I have obtained an Elgoo UNO R3 Arduino "copycat" with an ATMega 328 microcontroller. I am trying to load the bootloader onto an ATMega 168 microcontroller. I have a 16 MHz crystal (at least that is what it was labeled as at my uni) and two 22 pF capacitors and also a 1 kΩ resistor going from the ATMegas pin 1 to +5 V.
As in the instructions I uploaded the "ArduinoISP" sketch onto the board without issues. Then I selected the board Arduino Duemilanove with the processor ATmega 168 and the programmer Arduino as ISP and tried to "burn bootloader". This is where the problem lies.
Here is the "verbose" output for uploading:
avrdude: Version 6.3-20190619
Copyright (c) 2000-2005 Brian Dean, http://www.bdmicro.com/
Copyright (c) 2007-2014 Joerg Wunsch
System wide configuration file is "C:\Users\(user)\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\arduino\tools\avrdude\6.3.0-arduino17/etc/avrdude.conf"
Using Port : COM3
Using Programmer : stk500v1
Overriding Baud Rate : 19200
AVR Part : ATmega168
Chip Erase delay : 9000 us
PAGEL : PD7
BS2 : PC2
RESET disposition : dedicated
RETRY pulse : SCK
serial program mode : yes
parallel program mode : yes
Timeout : 200
StabDelay : 100
CmdexeDelay : 25
SyncLoops : 32
ByteDelay : 0
PollIndex : 3
PollValue : 0x53
Memory Detail :
Block Poll Page Polled
Memory Type Mode Delay Size Indx Paged Size Size #Pages MinW MaxW ReadBack
----------- ---- ----- ----- ---- ------ ------ ---- ------ ----- ----- ---------
eeprom 65 20 4 0 no 512 4 0 3600 3600 0xff 0xff
flash 65 6 128 0 yes 16384 128 128 4500 4500 0xff 0xff
lfuse 0 0 0 0 no 1 0 0 4500 4500 0x00 0x00
hfuse 0 0 0 0 no 1 0 0 4500 4500 0x00 0x00
efuse 0 0 0 0 no 1 0 0 4500 4500 0x00 0x00
lock 0 0 0 0 no 1 0 0 4500 4500 0x00 0x00
calibration 0 0 0 0 no 1 0 0 0 0 0x00 0x00
signature 0 0 0 0 no 3 0 0 0 0 0x00 0x00
Programmer Type : STK500
Description : Atmel STK500 Version 1.x firmware
Hardware Version: 2
Firmware Version: 1.18
Topcard : Unknown
Vtarget : 0.0 V
Varef : 0.0 V
Oscillator : Off
SCK period : 0.1 us
avrdude: AVR device initialized and ready to accept instructions
Reading | ################################################## | 100% 0.03s
avrdude: Device signature = 0x000000 (retrying)
Reading | ################################################## | 100% 0.02s
avrdude: Device signature = 0x000000 (retrying)
Reading | ################################################## | 100% 0.02s
avrdude: Device signature = 0x000000
avrdude: Yikes! Invalid device signature.
Double check connections and try again, or use -F to override
this check.
avrdude done. Thank you.
Failed chip erase: uploading error: exit status 1
I have checked and rechecked the connections and I am sure they are as in the instructions I linked, I've rebuilt the circuit many times, and I have also tried connecting the Arduinos reset pin via a 100 Ω resistor to the 5 V supply but that did not help. I have tried to use the Arduinos own crystal incase the 16 MHz crystal is broken. I have tried atleast one other ATMega 168 but that did not work. I've followed multiple different tutorials and even pried the microcontroller from the Elgoo and put the ATMega 168 in its place to no success. I am also sure that the Elgoo itself is working since any code uploaded on it executes just fine.
I fear I am missing something extremely obvious but I am at my wits end. If anybody could provide some info as to what could be going wrong that would be much appreciated!
Here is a picture of the circuit, I know it's messy but I hope that you might be able to glean something from it 
-AJP