forced boot not working. AVR not responding

[smurfinator]

I tried to upgrade from 1.0.73 to latest vemstune and firmware (with wizard) 1.2.11.

No bueno.

Fimware stalled at 33% and vemstune said "CANNOT CONNECT"

I have been trying to force boot by jumping my serial pins for...oh 6 hours now and it never gets past 12% firmware upload now.

I have an 8 year old v3.2 VEMS and I'm using Belkin f5u109 serial/USB.  Do you think the Belkin could be the problem? 

The VEMS unit derives it's (+) power from the same relayed post as the fuel pump relay and fan relay.  Is that bad?

Could this be related to my p259 channels all acting like they are shorted together (pump won't turn on unless fan is triggered by temperature (wtf?))

I just re-did all the wiring super meticulously and re-checked all the grounds (built per phatbob).

Anyhoo, my board is out to lunch!

Thanks for any advice.

[smurfinator]

I should mention that there is power to the board.... for a while, anyway.  Vemstune can see it for a few seconds, then the connection dies.  Forced boot from windows CMD/upload.hex dies halfway through... 30 times (!!!).

[smurfinator]

It seems that my problems with the p259 acting weird got worse (but was already sometimes weird) after I accidentally tried to connect to the board with the EC36 connector unplugged.  Also maybe did it once with the ec36 plugged and the ec18 unplugged. 

Does this cook some specific part of the board?

[smurfinator]

This was solved by replacing the Belkin usb converter with a new FTDI converter.  FTDI, where have you been all my life?!?!?!?!