Hi, newb and first poster here. Really need some help please.
I bought 2 Duemilanove clones from separate sellers, one from ebay and one online from a retailer in this country. Both boards have Funduino and 2012 May stamped across them. They both run the ATMega 328p and the FTDI 232R chip.
One has functioned fine. The second I've had the recurring serial port issue with, with both the Arduino IDE and the Codebender site.
I've switched between these two methods and between a Macbook running 10.10 and a PC desktop running Windows 7. I used the FTDI guides to remove, reinstall and reboot with the correct drivers, multiple times.
In my desperation I sent the one board back to the retailer. The other from ebay has worked fine and I've started my build project with that one.
The retailer send the issue was a corrupt bootloader and that he has reburnt it and it works fine now. He uses a Linux environment so couldn't advise me on the serial port driver issue for Windows/Mac.
I got it back and still couldn't get it to detect the Usb serial port on either platform or in either environment. I began to suspect the chip is damaged or malfunctioning.
I used this clip Un-brick the FT232RL FTDI USB Serial Adapter - YouTube to download the FT Prog utility from the FTDI website, scan and parse the board and then change the product code as suggested. I unplugged the board from my Windows machine and then plugged it into the Mac. The utility worked and both Arduino IDE and Codebender recognise the port. You can now see the correct port added to the menu and can select it. However when I flash the blink sketch gives the following error in IDE:
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 9 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
Codebender simply reports there was a problem during the flashing process.
Love to hear others thoughts.