Hello,
In a workshop offered by my university I have made a Arduino Uno-compatible board (if it will help I can post a photo of it). I can't get it to work with the IDE. I tried it, so far, with windows 8, vista and XP.
The blink sketch works fine: this starts as soon as I connect my Arduino to the computer.
When I connect my Arduino I get prompted to install device drivers for 'FT232R USB UART'. In the instructions the teacher provided, it is stated that you should get prompted to install drivers for 'Arduino Uno', so this is already a bit weird (I got a new microcontroller from him, as my first one didn't work for some reason: could this perhaps be the reason? I think this microcontroller may be an older version, but I'm not sure. It says 'ATMEGA328P - PU', so this should be fine).
Anyway, I followed these instructions (the part under FTDI Driver Installation for Windows) with this x68 driver (since this is an old 32-bit computer) and everything works exactly as predicted there. I see 'USB Serial Port (COM11)' listed under 'Ports (COM & LPT)'. I assume this is the point where you should be able to connect your Arduino and upload sketches, since there are no more steps and I can't install any new drivers at this point, though this is not explicitly stated.
I only carried out these instructions on one computer so far (a 32-bit pc running vista), but I know that on the other two computers that I can try to connect to (windows 8 and xp), I also get prompted to install the drivers for 'FT232R USB UART'. I will probably try those instructions on the other computers too, as soon as I can (unless I can get it working before that).
However. When I try to upload I get an error:
avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00
Or, when I use 'upload using programmer':
avrdude: usbdev_open(): did not find any USB device "usb"
When I try to upload, the LED starts blinking very fast for about a second (right after the compilation of the sketch is done), so this suggests there is some kind of communcation going on. Also, COM port 11 is the only COM port I can choose from in the IDE, and I know this is the right one.
I am hopelessly stuck now, and I'm considering buying a new Arduino Uno board since they are not that expensive, but that feels kinda like giving up. Also: I have soldered this board myself, and the workshop plus material costed me quite some money (that is, for a poor student: it was around $50 for a board, a lot of wires, led, and a lot more material for building circuits, so I consider the money well-spent once I got this working). I really wonder exactly what part could cause that the FTDI driver needs to be installed first (so the board doesn't get recognized immediatly). Maybe I should send the teacher a mail, but the workshop was quite a while ago, so that would feel a bit awkward.
Sorry for the long post, thanks in advance for any advice!
