Another newbie question

Other Hardware 3rd Party Boards
1

Hi , Please be patient with me I am still learning so dont make the answers too technical.

I own
an arduino duemilanove
an arduino Mega 2560
a USB Tiny ISP
I have been playing around uploading via USB example progs and progs I found on line
and a few bits I wrote myself
I used the arduino software, loading in a PDE file and compiling then uploading it
That all worked fine
I have now come across an interesting circuit that requires me to program a
MEGA 8 chip with some firmware the designer supplied,
I looked at the pinout for the Mega 8 and compared it to the Mega328 ( which is in my duemilanove ) and the pinout appears to be the same
so firstly, can I put the Mega 8 into the duemilanove and prog it there ?
Do I need to program a bootloader into the mega 8 first to be able to use the usb on the duemilanove .
I am not sure how to do that or if I need extra hardware to do it ( I do own a usb tiny ISP if that would help)
Or maybe I cant use the duemilanove to prog the mega 8 it in which case what do I do?
Lastly , all the programs I have used so far have all been in the form of a pde file which I compiled then uploaded
however the program I need to put into the mega 8 came only as a plain old hex file and the arduino software
doesnt appear to accept that

Can anyone give me a simple step by step as to how to get this hex into my mega 8
Thank you
Don

2

can I put the Mega 8 into the duemilanove and prog it there ?

Yes, that should work.

Do I need to program a bootloader into the mega 8 first to be able to use the usb on the duemilanove .

Yes, you need to bootloader to upload sketches.

I am not sure how to do that or if I need extra hardware to do it ( I do own a usb tiny ISP if that would help)

Put the ATmega8 into the Duemilanove and connect the USBTiny to the ICSP header. Select a board type that contains the ATmega8 from the Boards menu and select Burn Bootloader.

Lastly , all the programs I have used so far have all been in the form of a pde file which I compiled then uploaded
however the program I need to put into the mega 8 came only as a plain old hex file and the arduino software
doesn't appear to accept that

You'll have to read up on the 'avrdude' uploader that Arduino uses. It's the standard way to put hex files on an empty chip. You will need to set the configuration fuses to match whatever the hex file expects.