I have several Mega's that I used until they failed to upload then replaced. Is there a limit to the number of uploads you can do? Suggestions for recovery? I can use my setup to upload to a Uno. On the Mega it says it is uploading, but I don't see and rapidly blinking LEDs and it never finishes.
Hi @ronaldahunt.
Yes. From section 8.1 of the ATmega2560 datasheet:
The Flash memory has an endurance of at least 10,000 write/erase cycles
So it is guaranteed that you can upload to the board 10000 times. It is likely that the flash memory will remain functional even after you have uploaded significantly more times than that, but this is the number which is guaranteed by the chip manufacturer.
It is possible that someone could reach that number by using the same board for a lot of development work over a long stretch of time, but it seems unlikely that you would manage to reach that limit with multiple boards. So I suspect that there is some other cause.
I'm going to ask you to provide the full verbose output from an upload attempt.
This procedure is not intended to solve the problem. The purpose is to gather more information.
Please do this:
- Select File > Preferences... (or Arduino IDE > Settings... for macOS users) from the Arduino IDE menus.
The "Preferences" dialog will open. - Uncheck the box next to Show verbose output during:
☑compile in the "Preferences" dialog. - Check the box next to Show verbose output during: ☐ upload.
- Click the "OK" button.
The "Preferences" dialog will close. - Attempt an upload to the troubled Mega 2560 board, just as you did before.
- Wait for the upload to fail.
- You will see an "Upload error: ..." notification at the bottom right corner of the Arduino IDE window. Click the "COPY ERROR MESSAGES" button on that notification.
- Open a forum reply here by clicking the "Reply" button.
- Click the
<CODE/>icon on the post composer toolbar.
This will add the forum's code block markup (```) to your reply to make sure the error messages are correctly formatted.
- Press the Ctrl+V keyboard shortcut (Command+V for macOS users).
This will paste the error output from the upload into the code block. - Move the cursor outside of the code block markup before you add any additional text to your reply.
- Click the "Reply" button to post the output.
Is the Tx light on, blinking, or off?
I think it is off but will try again to confirm.
Another suggestion had been to send in the error messages after checking and unchecking some boxes in preferences.
After doing that three of the boards appeared to upload with both the RX and TX LEDs blinking so fast they appeared to just be on. The uploading ended with no error codes.
The fourth board that is installed in a telescope controller didn't ever stop uploading and there was no error codes. Because of the way it is installed I couldn't readily see the RX and TX LEDs.
I will try a little disassembly and try again and report back soon.
For this fourth board, I see no activity at all on either the Rx or Tx LEDs. As before the uploading doesn't ever stop and there were no error messages.
Good, so they seem to be OK.
As suggested in post #2, enable verbose output during upload, upload e.g. blink and post the output here using code tags. It's not that important that the upload never finishes, it's important that we know where it might get stuck so we might be able to advise.
Are you printing a lot of information to the console, that may be a serial flood. See if you can load the blink sketch and post your code.
Did they or didn't they?
Did the uploaded program work?
I have been using one of the three quite successfully.
So only ONE still works, is that correct?
I think 3 of the 4 work but I have only been using one to update my telescope control program.
Have you gone through the troubleshooting steps suggested by @ptillisch ?
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