Possibly shorted RX/TX pins

Development Tools IDE 1.x
1

Hello everyone,

Today I think I accidentally destroyed a vital part of my Arduino Uno; The RX/TX pins. I was hooking up a 9V battery when one of the wires (probably) touched a connector on the board by accident.

This resulted in the RX/TX pins lighting up fully, followed by the smell of something burning. I immediately disconnected all the cables and carefully inspected the Arduino. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinairy, so I just continued working with it. When I connected it to my PC later however (using USB), I noticed the Arduino didn't pop up in the Serial Port selection menu of the Arduino IDE. I checked device manager, but there was nothing there either. I tried it on several other computers and got the same results.

So now I have an Arduino without functioning USB connection. I haven't managed to program it with another Arduino Uno either, so I think the RX/TX is broken. Strange thing is though: it appeared to communicate with my computer just fine (using an XBee shield and a Bluetooth Bee module) right after the battery incident.

Any insight on how to fix this? Or, if it isn't fixable, can I still get some use out of this Arduino another way?

Thanks in advance!

2

Mayco:
Strange thing is though: it appeared to communicate with my computer just fine (using an XBee shield and a Bluetooth Bee module) right after the battery incident.

If the USB to Serial chip was burned out, then this would make sense. Anything communicating over Pins 0 and 1 (or SPI or I2c) may still be abl e to communicate with the ATmega328.

3

You're right. I tested it again and I get a response back from the board when using Bluetooth.

Any idea how I can program the Arduino without using the USB interface? I tried hooking up all GND pins, the 5V pin, the RESET pin and the RX/TX pins with a fully functional Arduino Uno (with the ATMega removed), but I couldn't get it to receive the program. Also, it might be worth mentioning that I can still get power from the USB interface.