Tjclark:
Hey guys!
A couple months ago I bought an Arduino Uno SMD. I loaded the drivers and started programming like mad (The arduino functioned as expected). Recently I bought some XBEE series 1 Modules, and during my experimentation with these I seem to have done something horrible to my device.When I plug in the arduino to my USB port, the green power light comes on, but the "Serial Ports" menu in the IDE remains greyed out. (tools-> Serial Ports)
I hopped over to the troubleshooting page (http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/Troubleshooting#toc15) and was lead to my control panel to try to change the COM port number.
When I open the device manager while the arduino is plugged in I do not get a dropdown menu icon labeled "ports".I have a second (working) arduino uno , so for comparison's sake I plugged it in and, as expected, a little icon labeled "ports (COM & LPT)" appeared with a dropdown arrow.
I perused the internet for a couple of hours trying to figure out what the issue is with the malfunctioning arduino and I stumbled upon a couple of possibilities:
The first is that the microcontroller chip is "bad" (http://www.me.umn.edu/courses/me2011/arduino/technotes/debug/arduinodebug.html)
The second is that I have somehow broken the bootloader. (I drew this conclusion from various readings)Because the chip is SMD I cannot (easily) remove & replace it to see if that is the problem.
My questions for you guys are as follows:
What exactly does it mean for a chip to be "Bad"? (internal melting? something else?)
What do you think is wrong? and
What can I do about it!?Cheers and thanks in advance
-Tommy
If the chip is warm = broken, replace needed.
Check Serial Loopback test, and in another PC