ADXL345 eval board programming

I ordered the ADXL 345 board (http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9814) some time before new year. It was exchanged because the usb interface was not working. The replacement had a working usb connection and I was able to read the accelerometer output from the usb port.

However, I can’t find a way to upload modified code into the device. I tried using avrdude but it looks like the device is ignoring the given command.

avrdude -p atmega328p -b 57600 -c
arduino -P COM5 -U flash:r:flash.hex -n -v -v -v -v

avrdude: Version 5.10, compiled on Jan 19 2010 at 10:45:23
         Copyright (c) 2000-2005 Brian Dean, http://www.bdmicro.com/
         Copyright (c) 2007-2009 Joerg Wunsch

         System wide configuration file is "D:\Devel\WinAVR-20100110\bin\avrdude
.conf"

         Using Port                    : COM5
         Using Programmer              : arduino
         Overriding Baud Rate          : 57600
avrdude: Send: 0 [30]   [20]
avrdude: Send: 0 [30]   [20]
avrdude: Send: 0 [30]   [20]
avrdude: Recv: X [58]
avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x58

The atmega completely ignores the commands and went ahead to send accelerometer reading (X=… Y=…)

I tried using the arduino application to upload a sketch and get the same ‘not in sync’ problem.

I read that previous version of this board did not have a bootloader in it, how can I tell if I have the bootloader?

If it does not have a bootloader, what is the easiest way to burn it? I prefer not having to buy a separate programmer just for this.

I also have a question regarding the baud rate of this device. I read from the atmega manual that I could increase the baud rate up to the system clock. Since I will be connecting other sensors to this board, I need higher bandwidth. Is it safe to increase the baud rate up to 2 Mbps? I’m sure the atmega is running at 8MHz.

Thanks in advance for any help.