oric_dan:
After reading back through this thread, it appears you never burned the bootloader into the 1284P
chip yourself, but have been assuming the chip you bought has a proper bootloader burned into it.
However, given the nature of ebay, that may be a bad assumption - given comments by others
who've bought things on ebay.So, maybe you should just try starting over and burning the bootloader yourself, using a regular
Arduino in ArduinoISP mode.Alternatively, scrub this mission, and just buy a 1284 board from Crossroads.
Thanks for the comments - but the 1284p was purchased from Crossroads, with a request to have the bootloader installed. I have also purchased one of his unpopulated PCB's but not had a chance to build it due to a few component shortages in my hobby box. This was why I've breadboarded the 1284P.
The 328P purchased from e-bay works fine 