Installing a fresh atmega328p-pu

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Troubleshooting
1

I'm using the arduino duemilanove and wanted to buy some backup chips.

Just for proof of concept, I purchased a few spare atmega328p-pu chips. When I plug them in, in place of the origional atmega328p, and try to upload to it, the uploading software says it's unable to interface with the chip.

Is there something special I have to do to initialize a fresh atmega328 chip? As far as I'm aware, the chips are essentially identical.

The only difference is there is a number above the atmega328p-pu that says this:

0916

And above my new chip it says this:

0926

But the chips numbers are exactly the same aside from that. Is this the problem?

Thanks so much.

Sincerely,

Y-aji

2

Upon re-installing the original chip, it does still work. (I figured this would answer the first question ^.^ )

3

The 328p processor must have the Arduino bootloader program burned into it's program memory before it can function with the Arduino IDE. There are a few suppliers that can provide this service but fresh blank 328s will not have that done. From where did you obtain your chips?

Lefty

4

Mouser Electronics. It definately doesn't have this burned on. Is that possible to do after purchase? I'm about to be a little sad, aren't I?

5

Ah. I think you led me to my answer.

So, I need to build a parallel programmer

Fair enough. Thanks for the quick response.

6

I did not have any luck getting that parallel programmer to work, and several others also have had problems with it, but of course a few have claimed to have made it work, so it's worth a shot.

I finally obtained this device and it works well with the Arduino IDE. It's a kit you have to solder up.

Here is one that is already assembled:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170376999470&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

Lefty

7

Cool. I saw that, but noticed it would cost a bit more.. Knowing that few have had luck, I wont screw with it. I'll order up one of these bad boys asap, instead.

Thanks again.

8

There is another way to burn the bootloader without a writer device.
See this.

9

The different numbers on the chips are probably manufacturing year and week.