Possibly bricked Uno? Lots of tests / attempts inside.

Using Arduino Installation & Troubleshooting
#1

I teach Arduinos to 13yr olds. I made a kit of 12 clone UNOs. #6 has apparently died. They use the CH340 chip to connect. Both ON and L leds light up, but trying to upload anything hangs and fails.

The board connects to Windows (Ba-da-bing!) and shows up as COM15. But uploading fails each time. Example of verbose output is:

avrdude: Version 6.0.1, compiled on Apr 15 2015 at 19:59:58
         Copyright (c) 2000-2005 Brian Dean, http://www.bdmicro.com/
         Copyright (c) 2007-2009 Joerg Wunsch

         System wide configuration file is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino\hardware\tools\avr/etc/avrdude.conf"

         Using Port                    : COM15
         Using Programmer              : arduino
         Overriding Baud Rate          : 115200
         avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
         avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 1 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x47
         avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding

Where the resp=0x code varies. Sometimes it's 0x08. It repeats the 10 fails and gives up.

The loopback test fails. No response from serial monitor.

So I bought a clone USBtinyISP device to try and load a bootloader. After getting this installed with proper drivers and testing that it does flash a bootloader to other boards, I tried to use this on the dead board.

Output from Arduino is then:

avrdude: Version 6.0.1, compiled on Apr 15 2015 at 19:59:58
         Copyright (c) 2000-2005 Brian Dean, http://www.bdmicro.com/
         Copyright (c) 2007-2009 Joerg Wunsch

         System wide configuration file is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino\hardware\tools\avr/etc/avrdude.conf"

         Using Port                    : usb
         Using Programmer              : usbtiny
avrdude: usbdev_open(): Found USBtinyISP, bus:device: bus-0:\\.\libusb0-0001--0x1781-0x0c9f
         AVR Part                      : ATmega328P
         Chip Erase delay              : 9000 us
         PAGEL                         : PD7
         BS2                           : PC2
         RESET disposition             : dedicated
         RETRY pulse                   : SCK
         serial program mode           : yes
         parallel program mode         : yes
         Timeout                       : 200
         StabDelay                     : 100
         CmdexeDelay                   : 25
         SyncLoops                     : 32
         ByteDelay                     : 0
         PollIndex                     : 3
         PollValue                     : 0x53
         Memory Detail                 :

                                  Block Poll               Page                       Polled
           Memory Type Mode Delay Size  Indx Paged  Size   Size #Pages MinW  MaxW   ReadBack
           ----------- ---- ----- ----- ---- ------ ------ ---- ------ ----- ----- ---------
           eeprom        65    20     4    0 no       1024    4      0  3600  3600 0xff 0xff
           flash         65     6   128    0 yes     32768  128    256  4500  4500 0xff 0xff
           lfuse          0     0     0    0 no          1    0      0  4500  4500 0x00 0x00
           hfuse          0     0     0    0 no          1    0      0  4500  4500 0x00 0x00
           efuse          0     0     0    0 no          1    0      0  4500  4500 0x00 0x00
           lock           0     0     0    0 no          1    0      0  4500  4500 0x00 0x00
           calibration    0     0     0    0 no          1    0      0     0     0 0x00 0x00
           signature      0     0     0    0 no          3    0      0     0     0 0x00 0x00

         Programmer Type : USBtiny
         Description     : USBtiny simple USB programmer, http://www.ladyada.net/make/usbtinyisp/
avrdude: programmer operation not supported
avrdude: Using SCK period of 10 usec
avrdude: initialization failed, rc=-1

This was done with the jumpered power option on the USB tiny to power the Uno (which does light up while connected)

I have also tried flipping the 6 pin cable incase it was backwards, to no effect.

I have also previously tried to use Arduino as ISP with a genuine Arduino, but that failed as well.

Do I have a bricked UNO? I don't have any decent way to try and generate manual clock signals, and the kids using them I don't think could have set a FUSE anyway as we're just using the Arduino IDE and physical wires.

I've done a lot of googling and tried everything I have the tools for that I could find.

#2

shadbags:
The loopback test fails.

Unfortunately, with the CH340 the loopback test will usually fail even when there is no problem at all. So I wouldn't put any value on that test result. In my experience, if the CH340 is giving you a COM port, then it's working. I'm sure there are some rare cases where that's not true though.

shadbags:
After getting this installed with proper drivers and testing that it does flash a bootloader to other boards, I tried to use this on the dead board.

Output from Arduino is then:

Nice job on testing it with a good board. I'd say this is good proof that the problem is with the board and not with the USBtinyISP.

shadbags:
Do I have a bricked UNO? I don't have any decent way to try and generate manual clock signals, and the kids using them I don't think could have set a FUSE anyway as we're just using the Arduino IDE and physical wires.

Unless the resonator on the board is broken or missing, I don't think this would help anyway, even if the fuse was changed (which I agree is extremely unlikely without using an ISP programmer).

shadbags:
Do I have a bricked UNO?

It sure sounds like there is a problem with the ATmega328P on the board. If the board has a socketed ATmega328P then I would suggest you try swapping the ATmega328P with one from a good board to see if the problem follows the chip. If you have the style with the SMD ATmega328P soldered to the board then it's probably not worth the effort to try to do anything else to rescue a cheap Uno derivative, unless you are well set up for quick and easy surface mount soldering.

#3

Nah, it's an SMD cheapy.

Thanks for the reply.

#4