Bricked Arduino Pro Mini 5V/16MHz

Development Boards Arduino
1

I bricked my 5V/16MHz Pro Mini, and I’m struggling to decide if it’s fried or fixable.

I don’t have an FTDI adapter, so I program it by removing the Atmega328P-PU from my Uno. I make the following connections:

Uno-------->Pro Mini

5V---------->VCC

GND------->GND

RX0-------->RXI

TX1-------->TXO

RESET----->GRN

However, this produces the following avrdude errors:

avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding

avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 1 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x40

This goes on for 10 tries. Some tutorials say to connect Uno’s RESET directly to the Pro Mini RST (instead of GRN a.k.a DTR), but that produces the same error.

I’ve been trying to re-burn the bootloader on to the Pro Mini using these instructions http://www.instructables.com/id/Burn-a- … -Pro-Mini/ but without any success. I’m using version 1.8.3, and I uncomment line 81: #define USE_OLD_STYLE_WIRING. avrdude throws an “invalid device signature” error.

avrdude: Device signature = 0x000000

avrdude: Yikes! Invalid device signature.

Double check connections and try again, or use -F to override

this check.

Any thoughts or tips? Is the Atmega328 from my RedBoard a drop-in (not literally drop-in…solderable-in) replacement for the Atmega328 on the Pro Mini?

2

Have you tried TX to TX and RX to RX? (I mean pin wires reversed) With the Uno Atmega328P-PU removed the Pro Mini acts like it instead.

3

Hey Valen,

I tried all combinations of wiring (I should probably invest in an FTDI breakout because I plan on using Pro Mini’s frequently), but nothing succeeded. I should have mentioned that the sketch on the Pro Mini stopped functioning, which is why I tried reuploading it, and when that didn’t work, reburning the bootloader.

Do you think its possible that the fuse bits, specifically the clock fuses, may have gotten reset or altered during some anomaly? I’ve removed the 328 from the Pro Mini and soldered it to a breakout board. I’m trying to use my Uno with the DIP 328 and Arduino as ISP to read the fuse bits of the “broken” 328 and make sure they’re what a 5V/16MHz Pro Mini should be set to.

What do you think?

(Thanks for the reply, I’m sorry for my tardy response - I’m new to the forum and didn’t have notifications enabled)