Out of sync from my experience usually means that either the device isn't being detected or the baud rates are different between the device and the PC. 1. Could u try different baud rates and see what happens?2. Could u see whether the plugged-in device can be found at the serial ports? U could do that by just listing out the contents of the /dev directory. First you list the contents without the USB plugged into your PC, then with the USB plugged in and see if they are different.
I wrote a python script a couple of years ago to detect the USB serial port. Maybe it can still run on your computer.
Ok..will confirm device detection tomorrow. What is the correct baud rate?
Have you tried another cable?
"arduino as ISP" won't take effect unless you want to burn the bootloader, which is very rare to happen.
You need to select the port from the tools menu, then you should be able to open the serial monitor or upload to the robot.