Pro Mini - Unable to program

Development Tools IDE 1.x
1

I'm unable to program a brand new Pro Mini 3.3V w/ ATmega 168.

I'm using a USB to 3-3V SERIAL UART Cable, Prolific Chipset which is successfully programming the Arduino Mini. In the case of Pro Mini I have also connected the RTS of the UART to the DTR pin of the board.
This is the behaviour when I click the upload button:

  1. Compiles
  2. Starts uploading, the green led blinks 4 times
  3. After few seconds the green led blinks again and the error message "A" is displayed

Depending on the OS used I get two different texts for message "A":

  • Windows7: "avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00
  • Linux: "avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding"

Behaviour clicking the upload button with the shift key pressed:

  1. Compiles
  2. The error message "avrdude: usbdev_open(): did not find any USB device "usb"" is displayed, no blinking of the green led.
    I don't understand why I get this message because the communication port is up and running.

I have also tried to program the board without using the DTR signal as I do with the Mini board, but without succeeding.

What's strange to me is that if I measure the voltage of the RXI pin (not connected to anything) on the Pro Mini I get 95% of the supply voltage (i.e. I read 3.25V on RXI and 3.3V on Vcc). If I measure the RX pin on the Mini board I get almost zero volt (-140mV).

May be there is something wrong with the bootloader? I have two new boards and they work in the same manner.

Thank you in advance

Sandro

2

Don't be too quick to blame the boards. I'm going through a similar misery with Leonardo and Uno on win 7 64 bit enterprise.