once upon a time, i had a site that did well, it got penalised by google and abandoned by me, that was few years back.

the advise i received was to start over so i did.

do you think google forgives and forgets, should i attempt to resurrect the mentioned site?

are there any tools, that can be used to check the penalty?

What did you do with website in the meantime? Did you take the site offline, kept updating it? It depends what was happening with it and how long since you got penalized?

Why do you think you got penalty?

I have seen that advice on other forum. Start Over.

Have you searched for this domain name on google. Are you on the first page?

[quote="aligee"]I have seen that advice on other forum. Start Over.

Have you searched for this domain name on google. Are you on the first page?[/quote]
What did you do?

This happens a lot of times to those who do not understand what they are actually doing or to those that just wanted to trick a lot.
But there's always a remedy to everything.
After having a big research of whats the right thing to be done, try resubmit your site to google's webmaster tool. It's the best shot I could advice you to do.

for free tools on checking penalties.. google it online.

If you repeat the same thing again and again then you won't be forgiven by Google.