jharris1993:
His subsequent reply:The culprit here turned out to be my ignorance. I was trying to use way more RAM than the ATmega168 provides.
Specifically I was trying to use some relatively large arrays, which I've now learned will get pulled into RAM by default. The RAM overrun was then causing the chip to basically become unresponsive.
By using the PROGMEM directive to keep some data in program memory only and out of RAM, things are running as they should again.
(Emphasis in both quotes was provided by me.)
Correct me if I am wrong, but as I read it exceeding memory bounds caused the chip to go totally un-responsive, (i.e. "bricked"), which he could only resolve using another board as a PIC/JTAG type programmer to re-flash the chip.
Where does it say that? All I see him say is that he moved some stuff into progmem and it started running again.
I think you're getting confused by his use of the word "unresponsive". You can definitely upload a program and it won't run but that doesn't mean the chip is bricked.