next topic »

[on:]

Alright so I just got myself the new uno in the mail... was doing some testing and managed to fry my 328 chip  ... I tested the board without chip and all seems good 3.3 and 5 volt pins still output respective numbers and when tx and rx are tied together and i type in the serial monitor what i type is echoed back to me. My question is about burning a bootloader on a blank chip. I have a blank atmgea 328p-pu chip on its way. Can i build a parallel programmer the one from here http://arduino.cc/en/Hacking/ParallelProgrammer and burn the uno bootload to it using the instructions from here http://arduino.cc/en/Hacking/Bootloader with the parallel programmer?
Thanks for you time and any help you guys can provide,
Josh Hostetler

p.s. I don't have another arduino to do the burning for me or I would just do it that way. Thanks again!

[Reply #1 on:]

You can try building these programmers, but it seems quite a lot of folk have had 'issues' with these el-cheapo single-use programmers.

Therefore I beg you: do yourself and us a favour and get yourself a real ISP programmer like the usbtiny. Invest 20$ and you will never again have to worry about bootloaders, or at least be able to re-burn one without getting a headache. If you're concerned about support for future AVR chips, maybe even get the 35$ model from Atmel. It supports firmware updates.

You didn't mention the type of OS your're using. The usbtiny works on mac/linux/xp for sure, I don't know about W7 and I refuse to even think about Vista.

[Reply #2 on:]

I forgot I do most of things on my windows 7 laptop but I do have a ubuntu machine i could work on.. The reason I ask about the parallel programmer is I dont have a lot of time :/ if it would have happened not on a time crunch I would have just bought a programmer. Money is kinda an issue but not as big as time right now. If I try the parallel programming it would be on an old xp machine I have laying around somewhere. I think a buddy has an arduino uno can i just follow the tutorials on using the arduino as an ISP and burn the bootloader that way?

[Reply #3 on:]

Well, if there's no way of getting a programmer in time (not using overnight express), do try the parallel port hack. Just be warned, that it might not work at all or act up. And don't forget to install the 'giveio.sys' driver for avrdude if you go that way.

http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ArduinoISP

The page says that currently the Uno is _not_ supported as a programmer. But who knows if that is still the case...