Breadboard Arduino and Crystal issues

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi everyone,

I built my first arduino uno using a breadboard. I'm very new to this and I followed tutorials online step by step that more or less all said that the crystal should be connected to 2 22pF capacitors which are then connected to ground.

My issue is that my breadboard arduino doesn't even light up with I connect the 22pF to ground. It WORKS by not connected the capacitors to ground(free floating) which confuses me. Can someone explain why this is happening? I see almost all the tutorials recommending it to be connected to GND yet when I do it, it fails and the only way for it to work is if I remove the ground connections.

2

If you have a brand new AVR it will be set up to run on the internal 8MHz oscillator with a clock divider of 8 for 1MHz operation making it easier for slower devices to program.

Have you seen this tutorial? Gammon Forum : Electronics : Microprocessors : How to make an Arduino-compatible minimal board