dodgyrabbit

I learned a few new things that might be useful for others:

My NetDuino Plus stopped deploying after I made some code changes. Could not get it to recover by unplugging, plugging, rebooting PC etc.

Turns out that I deployed something bad that makes the NetDuino hang. 

To "fix" that - you just go to MFDeploy and click Erase and just erase the "app" and not the Firmware.

This allows me to instantly deploy again.

Now, weird thing is I manage to hang the netduino plus by creating a PWM for digital pin 1 and setting the duty cycle to 100. Anyways, this might be a known issue or something else I'm doing wrong...

Yes, I set it to the MAC address printed on the back.

I retraced my steps tonight and same issue happened - visual studio gets stuck on deployment.

I switched to mfusb and rebooted - then I could deploy but then it failed because the project was still referencing SecretLabs 4.1 assemblies. I switched that and successfully deployed. However, these drivers are a bit fiddly because a surprise removal causes Windows 8 to crash. 

So I reverted back to the winusb drivers and suddenly everything started working.

Which makes me think perhaps the whole "stuck deploying" is some weird state if your project references a mix between 4.2 (spot assemblies) and 4.1 (secretlabs). I've read some other people having trouble upgrading from 4.1 to 4.2 with N+, so hopefully this helps someone.

Never mind... looks like Netduino (not plus) firmware got loaded by mistake. Doh!