Atmega8 Chips

Does anyone know of a source to buy the AtMega8 chips that would already have the Bootloader burned onto them?
Seems like this might be something that others may want. I do not have a programmer to do this and have not yet built the Parallel to serial programmer.

I am interested in this since the price point of the chips is nice compared to others, and would like to deploy a stand alone programmed chip with some of my projects.

Maybe this is a crazy newbie idea, but just thought I would ask.

You can get them on the pcb-europe site (the Arduino distributor): What Is Visual Programming and How Does It Work? | AppMaster

Thanks for the reply.

Any US distributor?

How many do you need? Pehaps someone has a programmer and some chips lying around...

I say this because there used to be a network call "Phranc", a group of people who distributed an almost free conector for Garmin GPS units. A sort of volunteer thing-- one guy made a whole bunch of them, and a volunteer network distributed them.

Perhaps something similar could be set up here in North America for preprogrammed Arduino chips. Perhaps others would volunteer to take mail orders for programed chips for their area? I could do BC up here in Canada if there is interest. Or maybe we could get hte distributors at Sparkfun etc on this?

Daniel

That sounds like a great idea! I am not sure why some company wouldn't offer chips this way.

Again maybe I am missing something with being a newbie and all.

Well I emailed Sparkfun and asked if they would do it... let's see what they say.

Any reply from SparkFun?

Nope. I don't think the profit margin is there for them. They would have to charge $8-10 to make it worthwhile.

In the meantime, Massimo's Arduino-as-programmer hack should be developed enough in a few months to do the trick!

D