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[on:]

So I got the Arduino USB board from sparkfun and was able to program the chip it came with perfectly. When I tried to swap the ATMEGA8 chip that it came with for an ATMEGA168, the Arduino007 software returns "programmer not responding." I tried it on both windows and osx. I tried changing the serial.download rate to 9600 and still no success. What am I missing? Thanks!

[Reply #1 on:]

The bootloader. It's basically a piece of software that replaces the programmer you would normaly have to use, and it comes burned onto the Atmega8.  

You can burn it onto the Atmega168 yourself, but you'll need a programmer...

Read this: http://www.arduino.cc/en/Hacking/Bootloader?from=Main.Bootloader

[Reply #2 on:]

thanks for the fast reply! Most of the AVR-ISP's I found looked much more expensive than buidling the parallelprogrammer so I think I'll take that route. My (first of many) question is will the ICSP pins on the USB board still work with the 168? If not, can I just put it on a bread board and wire it up to the correct pins myself? Hopefully that's it. Thanks again!

[Reply #3 on:]

Yes, you can use the ICSP pins on the USB Arduino board.

[Reply #4 on:]

thanks for the fast reply! Most of the AVR-ISP's I found looked much more expensive than buidling the parallelprogrammer so I think I'll take that route. My (first of many) question is will the ICSP pins on the USB board still work with the 168? If not, can I just put it on a bread board and wire it up to the correct pins myself? Hopefully that's it. Thanks again!

Oh, but wait!

I tried doing this day before, but as soon as i switched the setting in the IDE from atmega8 to atmega168, the options for bootloading the chip (via programmer or Parallel port interface) both got greyed out!!

What am i missing?

Thanks,
R

[Reply #5 on:]

Ya, I have the same problem. I tried burning the bootloader to a 168 with the microcontroller option set to 8 and it just returned a bunch of errors (no surprise). Do I need a new hex file or something?

[Reply #6 on:]

Ya, I have the same problem. I tried burning the bootloader to a 168 with the microcontroller option set to 8 and it just returned a bunch of errors (no surprise). Do I need a new hex file or something?

Amsmnptarks,

I am an absolute newbie, and havent successfully flashed a microcontroller yet (which i am desperately tryng to! (atmel168))

But heres the little i know with regards to your question -
    Yes, you DO need a different .hex file.
    Secondly, i dont think you can just use the arduino IDE to flash a 168 on the 8 setting because of "fuses". (Fuses are the little settings on the chip "the closest thing a microcontroller has to a config file") eg. They enable you to select whether the chip uses an external oscillator or the internal oscillator. And my clueless guess is that they are at different memory addresses on different chips (atmega8 vs 168).
   Hence..you cannot fool the IDE to put a bootloader onto the 168 instead of the 8 just by replacing the .hex file.

Heres a really useful site which has helped me understand this a lot better - http://wolfpaulus.com/journal/embedded/arduino2.html - it also has a link to the .hex file for the 168.

cya
R

[Reply #7 on:]

Hmm.. what about changing the fuse settings in the preferences.txt and then using a different .hex? Or would we have to change the burnparallel.bat too?