I am trying to upload a sketch to a pro-mini. Well it really is not the pro-mini but it is a device which happens to have an Atmega chip with 4 header pins for SS,MISO, MOSI and SCL.
I was told by my friend that the only way to program this chip is to use an "AVR ISP USBtinyISP Programmer for Arduino Bootloader USB Download Interface".
The link to that programmer is here.....
My question to you guys is....Can I skip the above mentioned "AVR ISP USBtinyISP Programmer for Arduino Bootloader USB Download Interface" and use an Arduin UNO instead?
I mean, isn’t the entire point of having that 3x2 pin header on the edge of the UNO board supposed to do exactly what that $25 programmer is supposed to do?
By far the best all around programmer I've used is this triple function module. It acts as an FTDI programmer, an ISP programmer, and as a separate serial port.
No. That's not at all the point of the Uno's ICSP header. The purpose of the Uno's ICSP headers is to facilitate programming the microcontrollers on that board. You can simply plug any AVR ISP programmer into those headers and all the necessary connections are made.
But that is for the Uno's microcontrollers as a target. When you use the Uno as a programmer, you can not just plug an IDC cable into the ICSP header. That would make a connection between the Uno's reset pin and the target's reset pin. You need to connect one of the programmer's IO pins (pin 10 by default) to the reset pin on the target. You can find some projects where people built a custom cable with a lead running off for that reset control pin. Here's one from Nick Gammon:
