I am looking for an affordable ISP programmer that has actual 3.3V
Originally, I had this one (USBASP1). It was shipped with old firmware, but I could bridge JP1 and flash the most recent firmware. Unfortunately, I found out that it only sets VCC to 3.3V andd still transmits signals with 5V.
People on the internet claim that AVRs can mostly handle that, but it is certainly out of spec and I lost quite a few 328P-AU after a few flashes. This stopped after I changed over to an Arduino Pro Mini as ISP. Anyway, even if the AVR could handle it, there could be other stuff on the SPI bus that cannot. So let's not spend a lot of time on this question. It is unacceptable for me.
So I tried my luck with two other designs, this (USBASP2) and this (USBASP3).
These also ship with old firmware and I have not managed to update them. The second one doesn't even have a header. There are two contacts under the MCU which I tried to bridge (because what's to lose?) and they have the same effect as on the other new board (power LED does not turn on), but avrdude does not get any connection.
The DMM shows that USBASP2 also supplies 5V to the MCU in the 3.3V setting, so that one is garbage too. USBASP3 actually has 3.3V (which is out of spec for 12MHz, but well ..), but it does not work with the old firmware on the chip ...
Any suggestions?
After trying to revert to an ArduinoISP, I noticed that one of my cables was faulty. It seems that the answer to my question is the black ISP. Both blue ones are garbage.
Flashing the firmware indeed works by bridging the two holes under the MCU.
The Atmel AVRISP mkII automatically adjusts logic levels to match the target anywhere in the range of 1.8 - 5.5 V. It actually doesn't provide power to the target for this reason. You need to power the target separately which is inconvenient for a quick flash but worth it for this cool feature. Unfortunately that programmer is discontinued.
Of course if you want to spend $73-$130 plus shipping you can get the Atmel-ICE, which also has this feature. That's a lot of money compared to your Aliexpress specials but compared to the price I paid for my AVRISP mkII and considering the extra features I would certainly trade up if I could.
There are some AVRISP mkII clones available. Some of them don't mention anything about the auto level shifting feature in their documentation. Seeed Studio is one of these (I don't know why people like that company so much, they pretty much suck in my experience). One that does mention it is Olimex:
In the end I think you have a good option with your USBasp if it provides the expected logic levels. In my experience that's a superior programmer to AVRISP mkII, especially with the upgrade to the modified firmware (although note that 99% of people have no need to update the firmware, despite that "scary" warning from AVRDUDE).