My computer crashed during the erase stage...

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daperl

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...of a teensy 3.1 upload. I can't even upload Blink to it now. I tried holding down the reset button while plugging in the USB, but that didn't help. I successfully uploaded Blink on another Teensy 3.1.

Any suggestions? Or is my poor little guy bricked?
 
As another point of information, an Audio Adaptor Board is soldered to the Teensy 3.1. So, there's that. :(
 
Hello daperl, the only to "brick" a Teensy 3.x is to prevent the hardware from acting on the signal produced by the re-program button. Teensy 3.x has is a little processor (the "mini54") that uses the MK20DX256 SPI-like initialization mode to hard-erase the MK20DX256 then load a bootloader image. That bootloader image allows your host system to enumerate it as a USB device for upload.

So, you may want to check hardware, power supply, connectivity, etc.

There is a very (really tiny, vanishingly improbable) possibility that the MK20DX256 ended up in a mode that prevents it from accepting the mini54's "erase all" signal.

FWIW, it's possible to know that the Teensy entered its reprogram mode merely by watching the USB device enumeration (device manager in Windows, lsusb in Linux) to see whether the Teensy is reporting its waiting-for-upload vendor/device ID: Vid 16C0, Pid 0477 or 0478. If it enumerates as another vid/pid then it's running an image, and if doesn't show up at all, I would suspect hardware.
 
On the unresponsive 3.1, I measured 4.99 Volts at Vin, and 3.29 at 3.3V.

On the unresponsive Teensy 3.1, here's what my system info says:

ss01.png

On the responsive Teensy 3.1, this is the system info:

ss02.png
 
Checking the inventory I recorded recently, the vid/pid 16c0/0483 indicates that your responsive unit is running as a USB serial device, which makes sense.

The unresponsive unit appears to be invisible to the Mac's USB controller. It's not necessary to be holding the reprogram button while powering up (thought it doesn't hurt either), but since I've never seen a unit go unresponsive once the reprogram button has been pushed, I am unable to offer further suggestions.
 
From the info in this thread, it certainly sounds like that Teensy was damaged. How, I have no idea. But then why your Mac crashed also seems quite a mystery, from only the info here. Any ideas? Maybe they're related?
 
What was unusual is that I never see a progress bar with the word "Erase" in it when I'm uploading Teensy 3.1 sketches. I only ever see a progress bar with the word "Programming." What's with that?
 
It always erases before writing, but that step normally goes by so quickly you wouldn't see it.

I'm still curious about this "crash". I understand Mac and Windows systems rarely give any useful info, but maybe you could at least describe in a little more detail what happened.

Obviously this wasn't a "crash" where the computer suddenly rebooted or the screen went black or to something strange, since you were able to read the screen. Did the entire computer freeze up, or just the Teensy Loader window? If everything was locked up, was Mac OS-X able to animate the "beach ball" cursor, or was the computer so frozen up that even the beach ball wasn't spinning? I know you probably don't have much other info, but could you at least try to describe in more specific detail what happened. Certainly you can be more specific than merely "my computer crashed".
 
This was very unusual behavior. The computer crashed. I was looking at an unprogressed progress bar with the word "Erase" or "Erasing" in it, and then Boom! My computer rebooted. No beach balls, no nothin'; white screen. I have a 10.9.3 mac mini with 8GB of memory running the same programs I always do: Safari, Arduino, Mail, Firefox and Terminal.

I was doing nothing else at the time of the crash, but Mail might have been processing an incoming message.
 
I went to a linux machine. lsusb and dmesg said the usual about the responsive Teensy 3.1. lsusb and dmesg said absolutely nothing about the unresponsive Teensy 3.1.
 
This was very unusual behavior. The computer crashed. I was looking at an unprogressed progress bar with the word "Erase" or "Erasing" in it, and then Boom! My computer rebooted. No beach balls, no nothin'; white screen. I have a 10.9.3 mac mini with 8GB of memory running the same programs I always do: Safari, Arduino, Mail, Firefox and Terminal.

I was doing nothing else at the time of the crash, but Mail might have been processing an incoming message.

Any chance the USB port on your computer was shorted -even momentarily? I had something very similar happen on one computer that had the front (of case) USB shorted against the case when I pushed the plug in a bit hard (possibly pushing the connector a bit off center) and when I connected to a Teensy my computer rebooted and the Teensy was dead.
<aside>
As a shout out to Paul and Osh Park, that was the only Teensy I have had issues with. I'm currently prototyping about a dozen sub systems with Black, Green and Purple Teensy's and having done quite a few stupid things (usually in the wee hours) they are all still running perfectly....including the one I flung across the room accidentily. It was on a breadboard, very snug, and when I chose to use my fingers instead of my chip tongs, I got two pins stuck in my finger deep and flung my hand in pain...Teensy flew about 15 feet, hit a wall, bounced on the ground and slid to a stop against another wall....I call that one "bouncy"
</aside>
 
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