chinese USBasp clone not working, zhifengsoft.com

ladies and gentlemen :

sorry, i would like to talk about something positive, but the purchase of a proclaimed USBasp programmer from a canadian company which doesn't match the USBasp specs and simply does NOT WORK brought us here to share our techie investigation.

  1. we spent the time to analyze the layout of the device and drew up a schematic from it.

  2. searched for a possible software which would work with it, found one, looked initially promising, but it still doesn't work

  3. got really disappointed after all this work, to find out it looks like a bait and switch job from the vendor.

  4. share the steps of this rocky road we took, so that you do not need to find out for yourself, the hard way.

  5. recommend to compare the pics of the product advertised and the product showing up on your doorstep a week plus later, you might not remember how the details looked when you ordered it, cause you were too busy working.

  6. just take our pics to compare your product against to identify a potential USBacp programmer which might not work with standard USBasp interface GUI apps.

on this webpage, dedicated to this USBasp clone you will be able to find out everything we were able to discover.

the whole story an more pics and schematics on our web page

http://wiki.efihacks.com/index.php?title=USBasp_Experiences

this product seems only to work with an english GUI from a chinese software company "zhifengsoft.com", but we never really got it work with it.

so ... please look exactly if the product you get, matches the advertised pics and seems to perform as advertised ...

for us being new to the avr and arduion tools chain, we initially thought we were probably doing something wrong with the device ... but all we did wrong was to buy from the wrong vendor

this was a canadian site and seems a well established ebay seller advertising with the word USA right next to the product :slight_smile:

we bought plenty from chinese vendors and luckily never had any bad experiences ... dx.com ... electrodragon.com

thanks for reading our story.

cheers, blue2u

This USBasp programmer MX-USBISP-V3.00 has been hacked before by others as well.

http://openrcforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2162

http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php/topic,149668.msg1138408.html#msg1138408

many many thanks :

after all this experience, the question now really is ... keep it and try to fix it ???

i'm a hardware guy and do firmware, but my task is to finish my designs and not to dink around and try to repair the tools coming in a broken condition from a vendor.

this seems most likely the only choice if i want to stay with a less expensive, small usb based programming device.

on the other hand i could return it with refund, if they allow me to, but as of now it doesn't seem this way :

Seller's message:
"All units are tested before dispatch. I have no idea what 'differences' you are referring to. These perform the exact function as advertised, which is programming Atmel chips. Please provide the reason for your return request. Regards, Jeff NooElec Inc."

what a joke, but somehow i find it hard to laugh about it :frowning:

the alternative is to kiss a few more frogs in hope to find the prince / princess in my case ... meaning to find a vendor who advertises the correct product " ad-pics" and also ships what is advertised.

got burned this time ... how many more is the question ???

coming from the 32bit arm environment and as much as i was skeptical about the arduinos, i really have to admit ... by now i love my little arduino UNO ... yes it's the one who didn't let me down ... arduinoISP

on another note ... i was also searching for a nice GUI for the avrdude with it's 1001 configuration options

found a java based one and devoted a page to it at

http://wiki.efihacks.com/index.php?title=AvrDude_Experiences#Avr_Flash_Programming_with_AvrDude_Experiences

maybe i'll make a separate topic and post it ... the page is not finished

after this usbasp experience, this was a refreshing discovery to program the avrs with a gui ... no install no registry ... it just works :slight_smile:

thanks so far and cheers, blue2u

hi guys :

found some more info on it

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/avrdude-dev/2012-10/msg00005.html

for the ones interested in it

i'll be on it after i resolved a right now high prio buetooth issue.

cheers, blue2u