Just something that I thought I would share quickly should anyone be interested.
I've designed, developed, produced and tested a board with the intention of programming many atmel chips in a 'batch'
The board is based around a simple atmega8 and issues control over the reset lines of many atmel chips when programming so that only one chip can be reset. It's a simple but clever process whereby the atmega8 holds the reset line of all the chips that are not to be programmed HIGH whilst releasing the reset line of the chip to be programmed. The ICSP programs the chip, a command is sent to the board over serial (as part of a windows batch file) and the board switches to the next chip, flipping I/O as necessary.
Currently, I can program 8x Atmega328 chips one after another in ZIF sockets very quickly with minimal user input.
Unfortunately, I'm not much of a programmer or computer programmer and so the best I've come up with is a batch file that contains commands to AVRDUDE to program and the powershell commands to open serial ports and send data.
I've included a couple of pictures to show my setup.
Serial is handled by a CH340T chip and programming by a common and cheap external USBASP.
I'm curious to know peoples thoughts on this setup and whether anyone might be interested in developing a GUI sort of software for it and perhaps ideas on feedback, capturing data whether a chip failed programming or not as the batch program just whips through so quickly, it's sometimes difficult to see whether a chip failed or not.
