At some point, I did something that made the MCU stop working. Before I had the problem, I was able to program my MCU using my Arduino Uno board. In my case, a few things hinted at the problem. I have burned 3 of those chips, myself, and it is a sad moment, that's for sure. The message you're getting is one sign of it, but can be many other things. But it is kind of difficult to really know when it is burnt. I'm not saying that your ATmega is burnt. If it does not blink three times anymore, has it ever blinked after boot before? For example, when you hooked up your Arduino board to a USB port in your computer (I'm assuming you have a USB board), has it ever blinked three times after boot? Does yours still do it? If so, you can relax: it's alive. To check if your ATmega is still alive, follow these instructions:ĭoes the ATmega still display its heartbeat? Normally the bootloader for Arduino Uno and similar boards have a heartbeat feature to tell the users it's alive: it's three quick blinks on the LED attached to pin 13, right after boot.
If you were able to program it at some point, but can't do it anymore, then the message you're getting from avrdude may be a sign that your MCU is no longer working. In this case, I can't help you without more information about your setup. It may take a while before you can successfuly program your ATmega for the first time.
It is just saying your IDE can't communicate with the MCU. Have you ever programmed your ATmega328P successfully before? If not, that message most likely mean a configuration problem.