Hi Robert,
Well, it's good to do some problem-solving. It's possible of course that my circuit has design flaws I'm not aware of, but it's more likely that an open board is relatively vulnerable (like an uncased R-PI).
My FIGnitions undergo quite a bit of abuse with chips being removed from them and swapped around fairly regularly. For example, my normal RevE's U1 socket has a couple of snapped pin clips (you know, the metal clips, one for each pin on the socket). I'm going to have to refit and resolder new clips! I did manage to wreak my bootloader once or twice when doing bootloader or tricky firmware development and had to go back to my ISP, but I've not yet seen the problem you described.
I have seen (as I've noted in this thread) a situation at Replay.com this year where I was demonstrating that the FIGnition was only running from a mobile phone PSU (behind the desk), so I pulled out the PSU from the mains while the FIGnition was still on to demonstrate, and that corrupted the FIGnition's flash. I'm not going to do that again.
My worktop is always an unvarnished wooden one. I usually remove chips using pliars, but sometimes I hold the plastic ends of the packaging of a chip (e.g. index finger at the plastic end where pins 1 and 28 are and thumb at the plastic end where pins 14 and 15 are). I have placed my development chips on the wooden surface sometimes for days while I'm doing other things and on the rare occasions (<5 in 730 kits) when I've accidentally, non-statically safely, knocked RAM/Flash chips during assembly* I replace the chips and relegate the knocked ones to development. I've not had problems with those memory chips; though I do want to do some exhaustive tests on how much abuse they can take.
I don't usually offer replacement AtMega168s; nor encourage sending boards back to be fixed, because I think it's valuable for us all to experience problem solving together and I want customers to discover resources for themselves. For example, I get my AVRs from
www.rapidonline.co.uk or
Farnell.co.uk and memory chips from Farnell or RS. Both Rapid and RS are happy to supply small orders for components to the public:
http://www.rapidonline.com/Electronic-Components/ATMEGA168-20pu-8-bit-Micro-16k-Dil-28-73-4276For £2.81, slightly more expensive than the EBAY item or £2.22:
http://www.rapidonline.com/Electronic-Components/ATMEGA328-PU-AVR-8-bit-28-PDIP-73-4281For the 32Kb version, slightly cheaper than the EBAY item.
Once you've gotten that far, it's a step closer to, say, building a FIGnition FLINT.
I hope this is at least a little helpful, I'm going to work on improving FIGnition recovery options this week though, so stay tuned!
-cheers from julz
* e.g. if I knock the pins of a chip with the metal part of my pliars or accidentally tip the chips back out of a tube onto my preparatory surface (which is currently a rectangle of uncoated corrugated cardboard), I consider that to be OK. If I clip them with the rubber part of the pliars, or a component bag, or tip chips onto a formica surface or touch the pins with the skin of my fingers; then for me that's substandard and I'll replace them with new ones from stock. Here I've described more scenarios than have happened so far, but it's helpful to anticipate.