Nicknml:
Does anybody know if samples sent out from Atmel are fused to work without an external clock? I tried flashing it without the crystal and caps and got the same error code as the OP got. Hopefully I didn't brick it. I did check my wiring at least 5 times.
It's been stated that AVR chips ship with the fuse bits set for internal R/C 8 Mhz clock enabled and /8 prescaler enabled, so an effective clock rate of 1 Mhz. Once the fuse bits are burned it expects an external resonator then such a resonator must be present for anything useful to happen.
Lefty