Bootloader damaged without hardware damage

Hey,

I fried myself an Arduino today. I was measuring out the pots on one of the Polulos and then somehow *zapp* and smoke, PC shuts down and now the board is still recognized over the USB but isnt able to receive firmware.

I already ordered a new one and its not the first time that happened to me so now that I can use the new Arduino as ISP I could try to talk to the old one, since its recognized.

So my question is if there is a scenario where the hardware is technically still intact and just the bootloader is fried/ a flash of the whole Arduiono could revive the board. I can imagine various degrees of "short out" with the boards and of course depends on what got shorted to what so I wonder if its possible that a short can only ruin the bootloader/chip firmware and not the hardware. Or is a short of always connected to physical damage?

Cheers

Most boards (apart from those based on AT90USB1286) have separate chips for the usb to serial converter...

The converter is still alive, the board is recognized. But the main chip is probably very dead, it had the boot loader on it.

It would be very very .... very rare for a short to only ruin the bootloader, or in fact damage the boot loader.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/09/2014 03:41AM by Dust.

Alright, thought so. Ill use this oppotunity to improve my SMD soldering skills

I'm not sure exactly what went wrong with it, but my Ultimaker 1.5.7 board killed a mega and I was able to revive it by using an UNO I had laying around as an ISP and reflashing the bootloader. . . .

I followed these excellent instruction:
[www.gammon.com.au]

Make sure your brown out detector is set to at least 2.7 V, better 4.3 V. Without BOD, ATmegas tend to corrupt their brain at power loss.

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