Something wrong with my Arduino

Development Tools IDE 1.x
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I just got a usbtinyisp because I would like to program standalone microcontrollers. Before I want to try to program microcontrollers, I decided to try to upload a program to my Arduino. So I connected my Arduino to the ISP, then I tried to upload a program. It didn't work, so I decide to first burn the bootloader. It took a long time, and I got a little impatient, and I disconnected it before it was done. Afterwards, uploading a sketch dirrectly to the Arduino beecame so slow...Even the blink sketch...Perhaps impossible. And when I try to burn the bootloader, it says

avrdude.exe: Error: Could not find USBtiny device (0x1781/0xc9f)

It says the same when I try to upload with the programmer. Is there a solution to this? Or have I destroyed my Arduino? Please someone help me.
Thank you.
PS I have a Mega 2560.

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PS the brand name of the ISP is Xinda V3.05

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Will I have to replace the ATMega 2560?

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Hi,

Just had the same experience: while trying to put a new bootloader on my Mega2560 using a USBTinyIsp Xinda v3.05 it seems to clean the flash memory but the new bootloader was not installed succesfully. So the result was a dead Mega2560.

Using the following approche my Mega2560 is now working with the new bootloader :slight_smile:

  • Instead of using a dedicated programmer i now used a Arduino UNO v3 as programmer:
    The latest Arduino v 1.0.5 has an example scetch called ArduinoISP.
    Compared to other tips from the internet this works easy!
    See http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ArduinoISP for the details

  • The only difference to the instructions on the above web page is that i used a different wire connections.
    Connecting a Mega2560 is not explaned on that web page.
    I used the wire connetions descript on https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorial/ArduinoBootloader/BootloadArduino.jpg.

  • After downloading the new Mega 2560 bootloader file called "stk500boot_v2_mega2560.hex"
    i copied it to C:\arduino-1.0.5\hardware\arduino\bootloaders\stk500v2.

  • At the last step "Buring a bootloader" i did receive a verification error which sounded serious.
    But despite this error message my Mega 2560 is working fine now.

My conclusion:
Using the current Arduino IDE will save you a lot of trouble.
Programming a Mega 2560 is only supported by a few ISP's
Buying a cheap ISP in China did cost me a long night debugging and searching on the internet.

Good luck with your Mega 2560, Luc

PS The new Mega booloader now supports the watchdog feature :slight_smile: That was the reason for this soap.

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Haha yeah I think I burned the bootloader with an UNO as well. That was a while ago...
Good luck with your Arduino projects! :slight_smile: