Can't upload a sketch to arduino mini 04/328

THe problem I experienced is that I just got a new arduino mini 04 (328) and a mini usb breakout board. I wired them on my breadboard and then the fun began. Couldn't get anything to work. Spent all last night searchin the web for ideas and came across someone casually suggesting to just use arduino UNO as the board to upload to. Low and behold that worked for me, yea!

However, this shouldn't work like that. So does anyone have any suggestions as to why it works for me to identify my board as a UNO in the IDE just to get my sketch to upload, even though my board is actually a mini04 (328)?

d 328. I've also the arduino ethernet, the usb2serial light, and also arduino uno.
Arduino uno works well, even the ethernet with usb2serial light works in windows 7 and windos xp (much better for the port dirver).
But when i try to use the mini ones nothing seems to do.. I've been trying every possible configuration avaiable in the web, even with the arduino uno as programmer.
I'm reading that you had used with success this last solution, can you explain me the set up of the hardware and (in particular) of the software.
many thanks in advance.

Hi, can you help me with Arduino Mini 04, program with Arduino Serial USB Board, Arduino UNO r3 or Arduino Uno. please I can't,
Appear me this error:
Binary sketch size: 1026 bytes (of a 28672 byte maximum)
avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00