You don't want to know how many PCB "coasters" I've got around here...I gotta say, it calms be a bit that even someone who know what they are doing messes up a board every now and then.
Intermittently wouldn't be recognized properly by the OS; wouldn't be recognized properly by the Arduino IDE (didn't show up in the "Ports" menu); when it did show up the upload process would fail; killing the Arduino IDE and relaunching it along with a reset of the board would end up with two entries in the system USB tree for the board... it was a mess. I had also thought it might be a Catalina issue; owing to the fact that I had just upgraded the OS on that machine (and there was an open issue for the Leonardo bootloader being nonfunctional on Catalina); but given that it seems to be working now I don't think that was the issue.So when you thought you fried it, what were the symptoms? Would it just not register on USB or take a sketch upload?
Depends on the exact board and symptoms. ARM based Arduinos and the Leonardo use a direct USB connection; all the others use some sort of USB-serial chip (FTDI, CH340, ATMega32u2, etc).I ask because I have several boards that I think would work if I got a new bootloader on them, but I had tried that a while back with no success.
If it's a USB-serial chip based Arduino, the board won't show up at all when plugged in to a known-working USB port & cable, and you know that the PC side has working drivers on it; then the serial chip is dead. If it's a ATMega32u2, then that might have gotten corrupted (and is re-flashable, there's an ICSP header on the board specificaly for this); but if it's one of the others then it's more-or-less non-repairable.
If it's a direct-USB Arduino, or the symptom is anything other than not showing up at all; then software corruption on the board is a possibility; re-flashing the bootloader & a sketch with a programming tool might help.
Or... they might be toast.
Highly probable that it's either the USB-serial chip (if it has one) or the bootloader.Some of those boards still run the sketch that is on it, but wont connect to take a new upload.
I've been selecting the "Arduino/Genuino Zero (Native USB Port)". As far as I know, the practical difference between most of them is just the Arduino-pin to CPU-register (and thus physical pin) mapping. However, the listings for "Programming Port" are actually setup to connect to a programmer/debugger module (the Atmel-ICE is one, and the Atmel Embedded Debugger that's on the official Arduino Zero and M0-Pro boards is another).What board do you select when uploading a sketch on your clone?
Re: soldering station.
Well, I was in a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, so I ended up just buying a T-12 compatible one from Circuit Specialists yea many years ago... it still works, so I haven't replaced it. Only thing I don't like about it is that it always comes up at 350c when it's turned on...