Measuring board pins with a multimeter.

avr_fred:
I gave you a suggestion to try in my post. Rather than inquire about it, you blew it off.

which one, using the Duemilanove board definition, or spending $2 to get a "USBasp".

avr_fred:
I should have recommended the "Arduino Pro or Pro Mini (5V, 16 MHz) w/ ATmega328" because that's what you have. The board name is meaningless, it's the definition that matters. If you care to look at the pro mini, you'll see the bootloader is "ATmegaBOOT_168_atmega328.hex" the same thing you were trying to achieve back in post #11.

i have now tried using that Duemilanove def-n and got;

avrdude: AVR device initialized and ready to accept instructions

Reading | avrdude: Send: V [56] 0 [30] . [00] . [00] . [00]   [20] 
avrdude: Recv: . [14] 
avrdude: Recv: . [00] 
avrdude: Recv: . [10] 
avrdude: Send: V [56] 0 [30] . [00] . [01] . [00]   [20] 
avrdude: Recv: . [14] 
avrdude: Recv: . [00] 
avrdude: Recv: . [10] 
################avrdude: Send: V [56] 0 [30] . [00] . [02] . [00]   [20] 
avrdude: Recv: . [14] 
avrdude: Recv: . [00] 
avrdude: Recv: . [10] 
################################## | 100% 0.06s

avrdude: Device signature = 0x000000
avrdude: Yikes!  Invalid device signature.
         Double check connections and try again, or use -F to override
         this check.

avrdude: Send: Q [51]   [20] 
avrdude: Recv: . [14] 
avrdude: Recv: . [10] 

avrdude done.  Thank you.

while the Pro Mini 5V 16 MHz w/ Atmega 328 resulted in;

avrdude: initialization failed, rc=-1
         Double check connections and try again, or use -F to override
         this check.

avrdude: Send: Q [51]   [20] 
avrdude: Recv: 
avrdude: stk500_disable(): protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0x51

avrdude done.  Thank you.

avr_fred:
You've got a 328P on a minimal board with what is supposed to be a 16MHz clock. We're now at post #16 you've not yet tried to upload to that board using the proper definition within the IDE.

and which one is that ?

i had edited the boards.txt to include "Lilypad w/ATmega328 @16 MHz" - and tried it.

i am not being vehement about the bootloader - i probably mean "Upload Using Programmer" (via ICSP connection) - and i have now tried all variations suggested, none of which work - which still leaves me at the point of asking about fuses and signatures - to learn more about what exactly is going on in this process - rather than just picking a board willy-nilly until i succeed in getting the right one.

isn't there some way (via command line) using avrdude to 'read' the signature of the chip instead of all this guessing ?

avr_fred:
If you're an admitted noob, perhaps you should slow down and ask questions that expand your knowledge. Work with the mentoring types here that ask questions, provide information and a can help with a plan of attack for solving a problem.

i did ask about what the difference between using "USBasp" and "Arduino as ISP" was - i didn't get a response.