Possible to read EEPROM from broken Arduino MEGA?

Other Hardware 3rd Party Boards
1

Hi everyone,

I need to retrieve valuable data from the EEPROM of an Arduino MEGA 2560 that as it seems has gone west.

The symptomes of the defect are as follows:

  • it started a couple of days ago with a sort of tipsy USB connection that came up and went away randomy
  • since the USB cable that I use is pretty long (10m or something) I thought it might be the power supply being too weak and wanted to reinforce it with a laptop PSU
  • the voltage regulater has gone up in smoke, apparently because 19v were too much for it (although it's specified to bear between 6 and 20v)
  • now when I plug the USB cable in the L-LED blinks twice and then dims down slowly.
  • when I touch the solder joints near the LED it lights fully up
  • otherwise it's rather dim
  • the device doesn't show up in my device manager at all anymore

I already have a replacement. All I need is the data from the EEPROM. Do you see a way to extract/dump it somehow under these circumstances?

Thanks a lot

2

An AVR programmer should read the EEPROM, assuming the processor is not damadged, but it will give you a binary file not formatted data.

However if the data is 'valuable' you might want to consider handing the board across to someone who has enough experience and will take good care of the board.

3

Okay, too much of a hassle. I consider the data lost. Not too dramatic after all... I'm rebuilding my printer electronics based on a DUE/RADDS now and... unfortunately experience a couple of issues... see my other post about that.

Thanks anyway!