Dear AVR community,
I have recently been working on several unusable Atmega328pb boards to see if they are salvageable. I have identified that the common problem for several of them is disconnecting the device without a clean break from a debugging session (using the mEDBG tool). I applied the following methods to fix the problem (that I could find through the forum):
- Creating a new debug session for a clean termination of the debug session. (does not work. tries to activate debugWire through SPI but SPI does not work either)
- Using the atprogram utility (to use the command dwdisable) to manually disable debugWire (does not work. the tool connects (says Firmware OK) but the actual command fails, saying that there is an error saying "debugger command activate physical failed")
- Providing an external clock to the device in case the board accidentally set the fuses wrong (does not work. it does not make the chip work with ISP to program or to change fuse settings)
I was wondering if there is any other method to try without using an additional external debugger/programmer. I was really hoping that the atprogram option would work, but unfortunately it does not. I appreciate any help and am sorry if I missed any other solution in the forum that was previously published.