I'm having a tough time trying to get the Arduino on a breadboard working and it's driving me crazy! I've never done anything with Arduino before (only the Raspberry Pi). I followed the instructions here and have triple checked all of my connections:
www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Standalone
I purchased this chip: ATMEGA328P-PU: http://www.ebay.com/itm/311131488228
And I purchased this USB2.0 6Pin CH340G Converter: http://www.ebay.com/itm/191146797242
When I connect power to the board and press the reset button, my LED connected to pin 13 (pin 19 on the Atmega chip) flashes 3 to 4 times (not sure, it flashes fast). From what I have read, that means the chip has been boot loaded correctly, I hope.
I'm using the Arduino Sketch v1.6.5. The problem is when I try to upload the Blink sketch. I just cannot get it to work whatever I try. I load the Blink sketch from Examples, under "Board", I am selecting "Arduino Uno", under "Port", I'm selecting "COM3", and then under "Programmer", I select "AVRISP mkII". I turned on Verbose output as well. When I upload, I get the following error message:
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 1 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x8c
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
It tries 10 times and then fails. I've tried with different "Board" options and different "Programmer" options, but no luck. I'm using Win 7 - the driver for the USB/Serial device installed automatically. It shows as "USB-SERIAL CH340 (COM3)" with a Drive Date "6/3/2009" and a Driver Version "3.1.2009.6". I've tried different baud rates too...
What else can I try? Is there a good method or tool to debug this sort of problem?