Atmel has contacted me and they told i am right with the bug i has discovered and they can help me.
Then have them send you new chips instead of mucking around on the kitchen table
They provided me the information i needed to test my results.

If "the information" is how to upgrade the bootloader via ISP ignore the rest of this post. Incidentially, since others have shown interest it would be nice if you shared "the information"


Have you understood nothing? how are you going to "test" that the chips are programmed so that the flash will last and not fade in, say, 6 months ?

The problem with kitchen table programming is that it relies on a "test" which is worthless because all it show is that the program is there today. The "test" can not show whether it will be there tomorrow. I have yet to see a kitchen table programmer designer that specified (or even knew) how to verify that the part was programmed so that it would not lose its program in less than a very long time.
All (I hope) the professional programmer manufacturers have means of absolutely verifying that the programming is correct not just "succesful".

Erik