hello there

I have a ATMEGA8 that I flashed with a AVR programmer. I think I messed up some of the Fuse bits unintentionally .

Now the the code I had flashed runs fine (without any external crystals) but I cannot re-flash (reprogram) the that microcontroller.
the programmer just refuses to identify anything is in its socket!

No, the programmer is okay as it can program other MCUs.

I am assuming I may disable the Serial programming interface of the MCU

If you think there could be some other problem please notify me.

is there anyway i can re-program the MCU to be used again?

 

The short answer is NO.

 

Try high voltage programming, but if you don't have the high voltage programmer easily available, I would just buy another chip.

High voltage parallel
High voltage parallel programming (HVPP) is considered the "final resort" and may be the only way to fix AVR chips with bad fuse settings. Parallel programming may be faster and beneficial when programming many AVR devices for production use.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmel_AVR

 

I agree with bug13. I have experienced the occasional setting of a fuse that rendered the AVR that I was using to become temporarily unprogrammable. The high voltage parallel programming (HVPP) approach has always allowed me to recover.

hgmjr