Hi guys I recently purchased the ATmega328 from Adafruit Industries, and I was wondering is it supported by the arduino? I have done some research and I kept on finding different information, some say it is some say it is not. Also how is the performance on the 328 can it handle complex sketches?
Thank You
SolG3 ;D
328 support is now built-in and standard with the version 13 release to the IDE.
Prior to 13 there were modified files that had to be changed to allow the 328 to work with the IDE such that it would recognize the additional memory sizes of this chip. The vendor I bought my 328 from several months ago had a link to the modifications needed to work with Version 11 of the IDE.
The differences between the 328 and the 168 are pretty minor and you should see no differences except for having double the programming space!
I also have a 40 pin 644P AVR chip that has double again the memory space of the 328 (64K). It does not yet have built in support of the official IDE yet but the vendor provided links to files and instructions for modifying version 12 of the IDE and that has worked fine for me. I went ahead and applied the same changes to the version 13 IDE (as an experiment) and so far have seen no problems using the 644P with version 13. The 644P is a little trickier to use as the digital pins numbers and what functions they perform are different then the 168/328 chips, but other then having to change pin numbers in some existing sketches, it has worked well. The 644P is the ultimate bread-boarding chip if your board is large enough. 
Lefty
Edit: PS, you may have to edit the boards.txt file to change the baud rate that the bootloader in your 328 uses to match. I did have to make that one minor change in version 13. I assume vendors of preloaded 328 will eventially change their installed bootloaders to the new IDE's default baud rate now that the IDE has native support for the 328.
So all i have to do is switch up the chips and I should be good to go. Thanks for the info.
Thank You
SolG3 ;D
So all i have to do is switch up the chips and I should be good to go. Thanks for the info.
Good to go...
If you are using version 13 of the Arduino IDE, and you make the baud rate edit to the 328 section of the boards.txt file, if your bootloader requires it.
I just tried to upload a simple blinking led sketch, but there seems to be a problem. I keep on getting the following message i have tried both rates too
avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_disable(): protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0x51
This is with the ATmega328 chip in. is this from the chip? because i also made sure Im setup on the right COM port Im stumped :-?
This is with the ATmega328 chip in. is this from the chip? because i also made sure Im setup on the right COM port Im stumped
Again it's usually about the serial baud rate that the bootloader in your 328 chip is expecting.
Do you know what baud rate your 328 chip is expecting? The default for a 328 in IDE version 13 is 57,600 baud. My 328 purchased from Fundemental was burned in as 19,200 baud. So to work with IDE 13 I had to edit the 328 section of boards.txt and change 57600 to 19200 and then all worked fine.
PS: And of course I assume you have selected the 328 board from the IDE tools/board menu?
Lefty
I have tried both 57600 & 19200 rates as for the Board selection in the IDE it is set to Arduino decimal or Duemilanove. Still nothing seems to work. 
as for the Board selection in the IDE it is set to Arduino decimal or Duemilanove
Board selection should be set to: Arduino W/ ATmega328
Try that and see what happens, but you may still have to flip the baud rate around unless you know for sure what you 328 is set to.
Lefty
I don't think my IDE has that setting "arduino W/ ATmega328, but now i am having trouble starting the IDE. It says Arduino.exe has encountered a problem and has to close. I re-downloaded the Arduino v13 from the site and still nothing happens. I am running windows vista home prem (I hate it just an FYI 
) What do you think i should do to fix these errors?
Ok i found out what it was. Vista was running windows defender and it would not allow Arduino IDE to launch everything is all set and I can upload to the board now. I Thank you for all your help 
Thank You
SolG3
Actually we are working on seeeduino v2.1, with Atmega 328!