here's is how it went down: I had the MCU programmed to create PWM and take couple of input pins to set the PWM length and timing. i was testing it with my oscilloscope and it was working as expected. and then for some reason my oscilloscope went flat, and my lcd went blank. so i checked to see if theres 5v coming out to the chip and there was. i tried turning it on and off with no effect. then i tried to reprogram it and it cant communicate. Did i blow my chip? how do i check? (I was using the 9v battery by the way)

It is more likely that a wire came loose in the bread board. Check all of the connections before jumping to any conclusions. If you have 5V at all the places you should have, check the negative connections as well.

Alright i took your advice. I disassembled everything and connected it back up. I tested all ground and 5 volt references which show up at(4.94) on my meter, but other than that everything checks out. but i still can't get the chip to work. Is there some kind of testing of the pins i can do to be sure?

Hi nimaaj,

If you are unable to program the chip, then I think two things could have happened. You burned out your chip, or whatever electrical disturbance that occurred caused your chips program to get corrupted. If you have a computer with a parallel port you can try to see if you can reflash the bootloader onto the chip. There is an explanation of doing that on this bootloader via parallel port thread.

Humberto