Apologies if this is the wrong place to post this question.
Purchased an Arduino Duemilanove from SparkFun and it has been working well. Using Arduino 0017 (Mac OS) to program the device. Last night it all of a sudden stopped allowing me to program it. I had been working on some code and uploading successfully to it when all of a sudden it puked on me. The symptoms are:
When plugged into 5V (barrel plug) or USB the L led flashes incessently for several minutes. This eventually stops but restarts if I attempt to upload to it via the Arduino 0017 app.
I receive the following error in the Arduino 0017 app: "avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding"
The green power LED lights but I never see any TX/RX when attempting to upload.
Have I blown the boot loader? It was working great and then just stopped accepting uploads. The Arduino had not been touched/moved.
Meh, swapped processors between a couple of Arduino Duemilanoves and the problem followed the AVR chip. So I guess I toasted my bootloader - yay - userland code can kill the bootloader. Sigh.
So I guess that it is time to buy a programmer that is capable of writing a new bootloader via the ISP connection. I mainly use MacOS but do have Ubuntu and Windows machines around. SparkFun recommended the AVR ISP2 for max OS compatibility - any recommendations from those out there doing this?
It depends on the programmer. An AVR dragon does not provide power through ISP, it senses the voltage of the target: "The ISP lines are equipped with level converters that automatically will level shift the AVR Dragon to the target board voltage."
A myAVR programmer always supplies the target.
You should never provide power by two sources because this can destroy your curcuit.