Let me say I'm new to this. But thus far, it appears that I've gotten a bad board.
First, I installed the software to my parents Mac, and tried running the simple introductory blink program. From the time I plugged the Arduino in until I unplugged it, it had what I assume to be a test program on it that wouldn't go away. Clusters of what I could discern as 4 blinks on the "L" LED.
The duemilanove is supposed to automatically reset to my knowledge, but I even tried resetting it before the upload. Multiple times. Nada.
Here's the error I got on the Mac: avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
Anyway, I got sick of fooling with it on the Mac, so I switched to my old trusty Windows XP Toshiba laptop. I got the same results, with a different error code. Something to the extent of "driver not responding" I believe... I could be totally wrong on that though. Can't go back and find out what it was, as old trusty's been fried.
After I got sick of wasting my time getting nowhere by searching through everyone else's problems, I went to disconnect it from my computer. I couldn't eject it, as it wasn't even on the menu, so I pulled the connection. About 5 seconds later, the screen turned off and the fan spooled up to about 3 times the fastest it's ever turned. Tried multiple different things, and ended up pulling the battery. Gave it a few minutes, put the battery back in, then tried turning it back on. Got the "toshiba" screen, but immediately after the screen went blank again and the fan raced. I pulled the battery out and left it out overnight. Getting ready to try starting it up again.
Does it sound like I have a faulty board? I'd love to mess with it some more, but I can't risk the little git frying the Mac. Help is very appreciated.
The programmer not responding error is a generic error. All it tells you is that avrdude is not able to communicate with the chip.
You could have selected the wrong board / processor type in the board menu. You could be selected the wrong serial port. Auto-reset may not be working.
If you are using the bare duemilanove, could you have shorted some pins against something conductive? It would knock out the USB port. On my machine it made COM2: disappear. Unplugging the port, rebooting and plugging it in again brought it back to life. But it won't (or, at least, shouldn't!) take out the whole machine.
After much fiddling I managed to get it to upload my program after reinstalling the drivers. Seems to work OK now. I had the correct board selected before, although the driver didn't make much sense at the time...
As for shorting something out, I purposely put it on anti-static plastic on top of a stack of paper. Absolutely no contact with anything conductive.
The incident happened immediately after unplugging the board... The system had practically no load on it at any time (works harder for a youtube video than it ever did while I was messing around with the Arduino), so I highly doubt that it was over-heated. The only thing I could think of is that something made the computer THINK it was overheated.
I haven't tried unplugging it again yet. I've just been shutting the PC down with the board connected to avoid the situation. Maybe it won't happen again, maybe it was just a fluke; to tell you the truth I'm too scared to find out. XD
Apart from all the obvious pins on the bottom of the board that can get shorted, there's also the ICSP header on the top of the board. I've covered the bottom of the board and the ICSP header with electrical tape just to be sure there no further accidents
palm
Ay ay ay. Learn something new every day. Hahaha.
Whatever the case may be, it was still AFTER the board was unplugged (by several seconds) that the computer crashed. Which sounds like a software issue... I honestly have no clue.
gypsy_feet:
I purposely put it on anti-static plastic on top of a stack of paper. Absolutely no contact with anything conductive.
Um. "Anti-static" plastic works because it is slightly conductive. It conducts (static) charge away from what's inside the package...
True but it is in the Kohms.
plain silver ASD bag from mouser read as open circuit
clear bag with black lines registers as 0.600M along a thick line, 0.282M along a thin line, and open on clear spaces.
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The totally silver ones are static shielding bags. They completely protect a device when it is inside.
Pink plastic and the clear ones with black lines aka "conductive grid" are dissipative
Only the Silver shielding bags will protect completely. The dissipative ones won't build up a charge by themselves but if they come into contact with something that is holding a charge, they won't actually do anything to protect what's inside.
