So I bought a cheap USBasp programmer off ebay and tried to program an attiny2313. Avrdude said the flash was uploaded and verified, but the led did not blink. I checked the output of the pins with my voltmeter, got nothing. I tried a few other versions of the blink program for attiny2313 and got the same results. Then I made the mistake of trying to reset the fuses and immediately bricked the chip.
I tried the process again, being more careful about the fuses and got the same results. Checked my wiring multiple times the leds themselves etc. no blink. Then I tried programming an atmega8 and I could not get any response whatsoever. The programmer didn't recognize the chip.
I tried resetting the clock on both chips. I kept getting a 'could not set sck' clock speed error, but at the same time avrdude said that it successfully reset the clock speed. I tried resetting the clock related fuses on the second attiny2313 and bricked another chip.
Is there any possible way my programmer could be able to reset the fuses, but not program the chip? Because I know the fuses were reset, I could no longer recognize or program the chips right after the commands went through. But my programs just aren't producing any outputs.
At this point I'm totally lost.
Tried a couple of other programs and got one uploaded and confirmed by avrdude, but the leds still don't flash. I've tried swapping them and the resistors and checked my wiring multiple times.