External programmer

I need to program the arduino with no bootloader to accelerate the starting time.
I have the AVR MKII programmer and I tried to do what they recommend there:

According to this post:

you have to make this chance on the preferences.txt file
Change: upload.using from bootloader to the identifier of one of the programmers in hardware/programmers.txt (e.g. avrispmkii).

But when I look at the file it doesn't say upload.using anywhere

Any ideas?

Cheers

Alex

You have read the instructions incorrectly. The file you want to change is preferences.txt and it is not in the hardware directory (what's in the hardware directory is programmers.txt and boards.txt). Your preferences.txt file is in:

  • /Users//Library/Arduino/preferences.txt (Mac)
  • c:\Documents and Settings<USERNAME>\Application Data\Arduino\preferences.txt (Windows)
  • ~/.arduino/preferences.txt (Linux)

That is where you will find the upload.using entry.

  • Ben

alexbeim,

I was wondering about the same thing.

I have Rel. 10 on one machine and the upload.using tag is not in my () preferances.txt either. (upload.verbose, upload.erase, upload.verify are).

I even deleted it and let the IDE recreate it.

However, when I look at my preferances.txt on a Rel. 11 machine, it is there. So perhaps it's a matter of using Rel. 11 ? I'm not sure, because the hacking/programmer post likely predates Rel.11.

Nope
I opened the right file but I don't see that line of code.

Here is what i see:

upload.verify=false
upload.erase=false
upload.verbose=false

Any other ideas?

alexbeim,
Perhaps my question should have been more direct.

What version of the IDE are you using?

Perhaps you could just add the tag and see what happens.

Alexbeim and BroHogan,

I think (but I'm not sure) the upload.using option is only available on 0011 IDE version. Because with 0010 it isn't possible to upload sketches without the bootloader.

You are right
I installed Arduino 11 and I can see it now
Thank you!!

it worked beautifully
Now my program starts instantly instead of taking 4 seconds

Change: upload.using from bootloader to the identifier of one of the programmers in hardware/programmers.txt (e.g. avrispmkii).

Apparently I was the one who was reading incorrectly. For some reason I interpreted this line as your saying that you were trying to make the change to hardware/programmers.txt. I'm glad to hear you have things working now. On top of having no start-up delay, you also now have an additional 2k of program space.

  • Ben