Could brand new programmer be bad?

[z.s.tar.gz]

I can not get avrdude to program my atmega644 no matter what I do. I've narrowed down the possibilities to either:

1) The microcontroller is bad
2) The serial programmer is bad

Both are brand new out of the box and I've checked my wiring a million and one times.
This is very frustrating to say the least.

 

[Engineer]

You tried connecting on all the possible com ports?

 

[tron-ee]

I can not get avrdude to program my atmega644 no matter what I do. I've narrowed down the possibilities to either:

1) The microcontroller is bad
2) The serial programmer is bad

Both are brand new out of the box and I've checked my wiring a million and one times.
This is very frustrating to say the least.

Stick a different chip in and see if programmer will program that part, if not the programmer maybe cooked, or maybe a bad connection. Who's programmer (h/w) are you using?

tron-ee