hello everyone,
i wanted to get started using arduino, so i built a custom board that fits on my boe-bot chassis. I am using an ATmega8 and an external 8mhz oscillator.
Can anyone tell me how to make a custom bootloader for it? I would have just used a 16mhz oscillator since there is already a bootloader for it, but i only had a 8mhz.
thanks!
Just buy a 16MHz oscillator / crystal? It's bound to be much simpler..And they're literally pennies each. 
[edit]Actually, not knowing much about the 'Mega8, I may be wrong. Can it even use 16MHz crystals. I'm pretty sure there's at least one 'Mega out there that can't..[/edit]
The bootloader doesn't care where the clock comes from, just the frequency. You can use the lilypad bootloader and just tell the arduino ide it's a lilypad.
If you're going to use an external programmer to burn the bootloader manually it should be fine. If you're going to use the arduino IDE to burn the bootloader I think there would be fuse issues.
doesn't the lilypad use the mega168? i have the mega8...
oh jeez, my bad. I missed that. Here's a link to a fellow using atmega8's at 8mhz with a modified bootloader. Again he's using the internal oscillator but you should be fine with the crystal.
http://todbot.com/blog/2009/05/26/minimal-arduino-with-atmega8/