I'm trying to create a self-sufficient circuit by writing my sketch to an ATtiny85-20su. It's all connected and continuity has been checked yet I'm struggling to write anything to it.
The error that pops up the majority of the time is avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding.
This happens when I attempt to upload a blank sketch or run a bootloader using http://hlt.media.mit.edu/?p=1706. To do this, does the Arduino UNO need to have the ATmega328P-PU in place? Or should that be removed?
The Arduino should have the Atmega328 in place, it is running the ArduinoISP sketch. After you have uploaded the ArduinoISP sketch to the Arduino, you place the capacitor from reset to ground.
Can I remove arduino pin 10, 11, 12 and 13 once it has finished and the blink sketch is working?
You can remove everything, you now have a standalone Tiny blinker.
As for the Reset Pin, I have heard that you can use it as an analog input pin as long as you don't go under the reset value
I think you can switch it to output a '1', too. That might be enough to drive a transistor (switch between 'input' and 'output 1') but I never tried it.